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A HANDMAID OF 
THE LORD 


MARGARET CULKIN BANNING 



By (Margaret Qulkin Hanning 


A HANDMAID OF THE LORD 
COUNTRY CLUB PEOPLE 
SPELLBINDERS 
HALF LOAVES 
THIS MARRYING 


New York: Geqrge H. Doran Company 




A HANDMAID OF 
THE LORD 


BY 

MARGARET CULKIN BANNING 

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NEW <||JP YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


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COPYRIGHT, 1924, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




A HANDMAID OF THE LORD 
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

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THE FIRST BOOK 
























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A HANDMAID OF 
THE LORD 


THE FIRST BOOK 

CHAPTER I 

I 

TN the nineties men bore with their shrewish wives 
A rather more than they have come to do, and that was 
why Veronika Pearse carried as one of her earliest mem¬ 
ories the sound of fragile breaking glass, one of her 
mother’s favorite culminations of rage being to hurl lamp 
chimneys down the stairs. Later it was electric light 
burners, though these were broken more seldom because 
of the attendant explosion of sound. She remembered 
many a night when, with all the globes unscrewed from 
their sockets, the house would be in utter darkness for 
hours, darkness broken by the pounding, scolding voice 
of her mother and by sudden freakish and terrible dis¬ 
plays of hysteria. Years after, the sound of heels on 
wooden stairways always made Veronika a little faint. 
The staircase in the Pearse house was uncarpeted, and 
the sudden fast impact of her mother’s high heels as 
she hurried down the stairs was a sound memory as dis¬ 
tinct as that of the tinkle of glass fragments. Veronika 
always hurried for the broom when the lamp chimneys 
9 


10 A Handmaid of the Lord 

broke, even when she was only six. She was continually 
trying to cling to the edge of order, picking up the articles 
that her mother threw about, putting things back in their 
places. Her fat, serious, little face was always pale as 
if from shock, and the brown freckles on her snub nose 
stood out distinctly. 

Mrs. Pearse was one of the hundreds of married 
viragos who in those times was given her head and con¬ 
sidered an act of God and an affliction. Perhaps, hidden 
somewhere in the privacy of their married life, she did 
have a grievance against the mild and somewhat paunchy 
Doctor Pearse. He had given her, during some inter¬ 
ludes in their unhappiness, three children, gifts for which 
she steadily blamed him. There may have been some¬ 
thing, some suspected or even actual unfaithfulness dur¬ 
ing the time she was carrying her children, a happening 
not at all unlikely, considering that Doctor Pearse had 
presumably been younger and more vigorous than his 
children remembered him and must have been cruelly af¬ 
fronted by the grudging disgust with which in even her 
milder moments his wife regarded the basis of marriage. 
There undoubtedly had been warnings against men given 
to her before marriage through unclean mouths and ugly 
stories told her about the opportunities offered to doctors 
for illicit relations. Mixed with all the corruption of her 
thoughts were the fixed ideas of a mind which had ceased 
to develop, that women were badly treated, that men 
were lazy and that between them was natural warfare. 
Undoubtedly too there was physical debility influencing 
her shrewishness, illness never diagnosed, for she had a 
vast distrust of doctors as well as a terrible prudery. 
In her furies these things came out. Quarrels always 
started from a stated assumption that her husband was 


A Handmaid of the Lord 11 

not treating her well, that she wouldn’t be his slave any 
longer. As she scolded she ignited further thoughts and 
misconceptions until her rage was beyond her own con¬ 
trol. The torrent of her mother’s words hit against 
Veronika’s consciousness like rain against a pane of glass. 
But with the sights, the sounds of fury, the occasional 
dangers of it when rage forgot all reason, she was 
marked. Her passion for order and decorum had its 
origin in those childish days of disorder and wretched¬ 
ness. Her apprehension of disagreement between people 
must have come from that time too, along with ridiculous 
things such as being inordinately greedy. 

The Pearse children were always hungry or stuffed 
because there was no such thing as an order of meals 
in their experience. It was usually impossible for Mrs. 
Pearse to remain quiescent during a meal even if she 
had prepared it. The sight of her husband, his most 
casual remark, could set on fire the resentment that al¬ 
ways lay smoldering in her. When being a woman ceased 
to be a shame to her it became a grievance. A kind of 
perverted feminism steamed in her all the time. Men 
had “the best time.” They got out of the house when 
the work was to be done, went to offices, put their feet 
on the desks and flirted with nurses and stenographers 
while women stayed at home and slaved for men. She 
never forgave men for her labor pains. She never for¬ 
gave her husband for being able to sleep while the chil¬ 
dren were sick, for instinctively she could not sleep 
though she might feel her children were nuisances. She 
denounced the entire male sex and possibly was secretly 
avid for the kind of experience she had been denied. 
Perhaps she felt, without articulation, that she had never 
found anything in the relation of man and woman except 


12 A Handmaid of the Lord 

pain and responsibility, and she was jealous of the fact 
that other people might have happier experience. 

Slightly educated, educated out of the simplicity of 
the class of women who took life as it was, and not 
advanced far enough to think through to reasonable or 
fair solutions she was to her children a specter of un¬ 
reason. They never were deceived in their clear little 
minds as to the cause of unrest in their home. Bound¬ 
less was their sympathy for their father. 

He probably had slightly the best of the situation. 
There was every excuse for his dropping into a warm 
restaurant and having supper—he could always say a 
patient had detained him and as he would not be be¬ 
lieved anyhow, it hardly mattered. And when he stayed 
away the children were not sorry. They coveted hours 
of peace and meals they prepared and ate together. At 
the grocery they would buy chocolate marshmallow 
cookies and big cans of prepared baked beans. Then 
with an air of cookery Veronika would drop the can 
solemnly into steaming hot water while Lily peeled the 
potatoes. Veronika’s greatest childhood pleasure was to 
mix up beans and potatoes and butter and eat the mess 
luxuriously while she read a book. 

They would feast. Those were banquets, those gour- 
mandish meals in the warm kitchen, with peace in the 
house. Veronika never quite separated physical comfort 
from mental peace. 

But if they had strain and discomfort, at least the 
Pearse children escaped the twitterings which surround 
so many children. They got at life young and a sense 
of fact, grim as fascinating, humorous as terrible, came 
to them early. They never had any illusions about life’s 
being equable. To them existence was an escape from 


13 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

quarrels, a continual attempt to rectify disharmony. 
They formulated strategies to meet things as they came, 
had philosophies which were an odd blend of super¬ 
stition and observation, melancholy and childish hope. 
One knew, for example, that it was a long road that had 
no turning, that it was always darkest just before dawn. 
Add to that the digestion of a few romances, in which 
magical and thrilling improvement in circumstances comes 
just before conclusion and the shrewd knowledge that 
after a particular battle peace reigned for a time in their 
household, and there was an excellent working philosophy. 
Also there was the knowledge that the Bronte sisters 
had died young and suffered unjustly. The girls loved 
the Brontes and felt kinship to them on a basis of nat¬ 
ural melancholy. 

There was of course the comic phase. Somebody up¬ 
setting something unexpectedly on some one else or more 
rarely their mother in a humorous mood when some 
weight of oppression seemed to lift from her mind and she 
was like a mischievous girl with a taste for practical jokes. 
Holidays worked partial magic too. There was some¬ 
thing in Mrs. Pearse’s German heredity which reverenced 
a holiday. She respected no church and no holyday but 
she had a respect for Thanksgiving and Christmas. 
There were presents and stockings and nervous festivity, 
but the thing the children liked best was the night before 
Thanksgiving or Christmas with the smell of wet turkey 
and onion and bread dressing pervading the kitchen. An¬ 
ticipation was the most joyful emotion they ever had, for 
on the holiday things invariably went more or less askew. 

They were heathen. The theory of prayer they found 
once in a while about them in the minds of other chil¬ 
dren, in the precepts of the Sunday School teacher when 


14 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


they were packed off to the nearest church occasionally. 
They realized that their attendance at Sunday School was 
dependent primarily on having new clothes or clothes in 
order, and while money was not scarce in the household 
it was so wretchedly administered that the children rarely 
had a whole church costume ready. But once in a while 
they went, and got an impression of religion from the 
drone of the minister or Sunday School superintendent, 
from the alternate fulsomeness or humility of the hymns 
which they early learned to parody. It was their mother 
who sent them to Sunday School in sudden flares of 
respectability, but it was their father who once in a 
while asserted himself and took them to the white board 
church five blocks away, to a ritual called Mass. They 
did not feel proud of attendance there. The people who 
knelt around them were mostly foreigners, or Irish 
women sighing over rosaries. The ritual was unex¬ 
plained, and in their hearts the girls were ashamed of 
being branded as Roman Catholics. Once when a priest 
came to call and their mother was insulting to him they 
stood behind the pantry door in scared giggles—and they 
created their own God. God took place in their scheme 
of things as a person who had rather fooled the Bronte 
girls (who were always taken in by him) and as one 
from whom favors might be wrung by certain propitia¬ 
tions. They both prayed with an eye on results, and when 
they prayed for a peaceful night and their mother raged 
they naturally suspected Deity. 

There were old medical books all over the house, and 
sprinkled among these a large supply of minor classics, 
standard sets of the world’s best oratory and the world’s 
best essays and the world’s best humor, mixed with a 
few Greek and French translations. Erudition had 


A Handmaid of the Lord 15 

slipped by their father, but he loved the signs of it and 
he loved to read. They all read, even Tom, as naturally 
as they breathed. 

Many things that they met in books were incompre¬ 
hensible to them, but they were usually content to let 
the loose ends of thought fly. Their mother had given 
them extremely healthy bodies and surrounded them with 
so much excitement that they never sought juvenile sala¬ 
ciousness. Veronika’s first excited sense of sex came 
not in the whispers of school children, which she never 
was invited to share, but in the thrilling experiences of 
some of the ladies in a book of English and Scottish 
ballads. She was fully informed by these, which were 
unexpurgated, that there was always great concern about 
the bed the lady slept in and with whom. But imaginings 
carried her no farther. 

Far more important was the catching of the infrequent 
street car to get them to High School on time. The 
school was so far from their home that the car was a 
necessity. But a race it was—against fate and against 
time! A tragic adventure every morning of their lives 
was the attempt of the girls to catch the car. With 
Tom it was different. His clothes were bought by his 
father and he had things ready most of the time. He 
drove through the disorder of the house regardless of 
anything except that he was going to meet some of his 
friends on a certain car. But Lily and Veronika were 
blocked by dozens of things—by the fact that their 
mother had promised to iron a petticoat early and hadn’t 
done it, by a shoe lace breaking (there were never extra 
shoe laces in that house), by their father coming down¬ 
stairs and asking for his breakfast, which one of them 
must try to prepare with an eye on the clock—by the 


16 A Handmaid of the Lord 

difficulty of getting breakfast themselves for themselves. 
Their father had forbidden them to go to school with¬ 
out it, but he had no idea of how often they did so. 
Their mother was always flurried by the exigency of 
keeping any appointments on time, and a flurry with 
her changed almost always into a temper. And also 
they hampered themselves. They were, both of them, 
unskillful with their hands. Often and often Veronika 
choked down a piece of toast, saying over and over in 
her mind, “God, let me catch the car—God, let me catch 
the car.” 

Sometimes she and Lily were successful and with the 
other children sought places in the warm front of the 
jerking, one-horse street car, pushing forward as far as 
they could, Lily’s face blond and sweet and plaintive 
under her brown felt hat and Veronika always looking 
a little absurd, the freckles cruelly evident in the strong 
morning light with no rise of color in her face to soften 
its blotchiness, the puff of her cheeks turning her pathos 
into comedy and her sleek, long thin hair edging her 
face without framing it. She was conscious of her 
unattractiveness, but the contrast of herself with those 
about her never bothered her. Even early she was filled 
with such tremendous ambition, such dreams, that her 
mind leapt carelessly over the minor differences between 
herself and her companions. That was where she 
branched from Lily, for Lily wanted to have the same 
things that the people around her had. Lily was eager 
for a red wool coat or a new serge dress, while Veronika 
paraded her soul and her body in imaginings that became 
possibilities only to her. 

To battle and to dream were her accomplishments. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


17 


2 

It was cold country. For nine months of the year the 
body needed extra protection. For nine months of the 
year one might expect the winds bringing snow or rain 
or merely the chilling song of their own restlessness. 
Around the little city lay the gaping wounds that were 
open pit mines, their orifices still trodden red clay. A 
truck farm struggled here and there—a dairy, but for the 
most part it was waste land with the gray rocks showing 
through the thin sod at intervals, a land where pines 
and spruces were natural habitants. Vegetation needed 
strength to survive. Barren, often bleak country, without 
the grandeur of mountains or the peace of plains, but 
courageous, unbroken as if it turned a surly refusal to the 
plow and the harrow. It exacted strength and scorned 
frailty. The children who played in its snowdrifts were 
hard, red-cheeked youngsters. In such a place if the 
imagination does not starve it turns to fantasy and wild 
adventures and hard-earned shelter from the storm. 
Winds singing around the corner of the dark house, 
soughing pines, give no grace to fancy, and when the 
storm is within as well as without, when the darkness 
is charged with anger and hate and fear, the easy temper 
does not survive. Malison belongs to the storm. 

Mrs. Pearse hated Valhalla. She had hoped that her 
husband would settle in the milder farming country of 
Ohio, where she had been brought up. But to Valhalla 
he had come and there been rooted by the hundreds of 
threads which hold a doctor to the lives of his patients. 
It had been a village when he had come. It became a city 
in name, with street car lines stretching through it, and 
a stray factory or two rearing ugly wooden bulks. 


18 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


Mostly it was still tributary to the mine and dominated 
by the mine. The mine called for and received hun¬ 
dreds of men, recruited from other places, other coun¬ 
tries, who brought little allegiance to it—only their 
strength. The traditions they held, the memories locked 
in their minds never were given to Valhalla. They lived 
in parts of the city which became peculiarly their own, 
and some of them had families and some of them, living 
there only for a season or so, had no home but the bed 
in the boarding house, the saloon and later the cheap 
movie house. Now and then in a fierce flare, some pas¬ 
sion came to light—some one murdered his wife and there 
was a rough newspaper story of an amour, succulent 
enough if it had been a tale of Americans, but draped in 
the foreign nomenclature, located in the shack of some 
miner, it became, except to some imaginative reporter, 
only another instance of the way “the miners live.” 

The miners did not belong to the city life. They had 
never even heard of the Pearse domestic scandal. But 
they made their impression on Veronika. She never 
thought of them, in childhood at least, in any humani¬ 
tarian way. She never thought of them as romantic. 
But they were there, part of the roughness of life, part 
of the scene of red clay and spruce tree, uncouth looking 
men whose eyes met hers occasionally as she stared at 
them, passing some of them on street or road, and whose 
eyes told her nothing except vaguely that life wasn’t all 
beer and skittles—which indeed she already knew. 


CHAPTER II 


I N the kitchen Veronika struggled to fix the sink. It 
refused to drain, and she sat beneath it with a monkey- 
wrench unscrewing bolts. She wanted the kitchen to be 
clean before any one got home, and the sink had gone 
back on her at the last minute. Above her head the 
paint peeled off the wall, leaving white patches with 
smoky brown flakes of paint clinging. The kitchen was 
shabby and in ill repair. But Veronika, conscious of 
achievement, saw none of that. She was glad for the 
order around her, because of the white floor that she had 
scrubbed and the new oilcloth on the table that was im¬ 
maculate and the pan of potatoes that were peeled and 
lay in clear water preserving their whiteness. She toiled 
at the sink and wondered when her mother would come 
downstairs, and if Lily was having a good time at Daisy’s 
party, and if Tom would have his picture in the paper 
to-morrow if the S.H.S. won the basketball game to-day. 
She had a way of rounding up her family in her mind. 
She always worried about them and took idle and useless 
responsibility for them, hardly justified by the two years 
difference in age between her and Tom and the scant year 
and a half between her and her sister, who was younger. 

Mrs. Pearse had gone to her room and locked the door. 
She did that sometimes for half a day at a time. When 
she came out she would have written a couple of letters 
in her extravagant curlicued handwriting with intolerable 
pale ink, letters to her sister Minnie and her sister Rose. 
Letters were very important to her. Or she would have 
19 


20 A Handmaid of the Lord 

elaborately frizzed her hair, or perhaps done nothing at 
all except sit and rock and read the daily newspaper. She 
never read anything else. 

Veronika could hear her stirring now and made haste 
with her operation. When her mother came into the 
kitchen it was the signal for interference with every activ¬ 
ity. She loosened the joint and scooped out the rubbish 
accumulated in it. Then with lye and boiling water she 
cleaned it. It was not a pleasant task, but like every fun¬ 
damental necessity it gave her pleasure. The water ran 
through beautifully at last and she watched it with sat¬ 
isfaction. 

Outside the afternoon was closing in. Snow had be¬ 
gun to fall again, filling in the deep trenches dug along 
the sidewalk to the street. It was a rough, driven snow 
coming slantingly along. Veronika thought of Lily’s 
new seven dollar velvet hat. It would be spotted and Lily 
would be wretched. She glanced at the alarm clock on 
the side of the cutting board. Past four. If it kept up 
like this it would be drifted in entirely before night. 
Drifts meant isolation for another twenty-four hours. 
And yet the snugness of the half dark kitchen captured 
her. Outside the snow beating on the three great pines 
which stood at the back of the house, and within the 
glow of the fire coming through the open slats in the 
door of the coal range. Her mind drew off a little to 
look at the pictures. That strange double power of act¬ 
ing in the drama of life, even as she observed it, had 
already become Veronika’s. She stood at the window, 
her blue and white checked apron tied around her waist, 
its ample folds revealing the slimness of the sixteen- 
year-old girl figure who watched the snow drive past, dim¬ 
ming the barren landscape. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 21 

Her mother’s heels clicked on the stairs and the door 
to the kitchen opened. Veronika did not turn. She knew 
all the familiar beginnings of her mother’s sentences. 
Still less did she wish to see the tight-drawn face, the 
bright half-hysteric eyes which she imagined behind her. 
But Mrs. Pearse opened no attack. She went to the cup¬ 
board and took out the canister of tea, making herself 
busy with the kettle and the stove lids, rattling every¬ 
thing. There was a fierce busyness about her mother’s 
activities that Veronika detested. Everything she touched 
seemed to make an unnecessary clatter. 

“More snow,” said Mrs. Pearse, “we might as well 
be dead and in our graves as in this place. I’m not going 
to stand it. I’m going to put on my hat and out I go.” 

“Why don’t you?” asked Veronika ironically. 

“Make fun of me—go as far as you like. Only un¬ 
derstand I brought you into the world. Your father 
didn’t. While he was running the streets with other 
women—” 

“Oh, shut up—” said Veronika. “I’ve been working 
here all afternoon. You can’t come down here and fight.” 

“Where’s your father? Was that him at the phone?” 

Veronika did not answer. 

“Was that your father at the phone, I said?” 

“No.” 

“Well—you better call him up and tell him his mother’s 
dead.” 

Veronika wheeled. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“His mother’s dead.” 

“Where did you hear that?” 

“I heard it. He got a telegram this morning. I took 
it.” 


22 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“And this is the first time you’ve tried to reach him.” 

“Yes, it is. He’d have been running off East to have 
a good time. I know him. Running off to have meals 
on dining cars and deserting his family without a cent.” 

Veronika’s mind went into quick action. She had 
little notion of propriety except that her father should 
be told. 

She understood in a flash why her mother had been 
secluded all day in her room. She was keeping the 
knowledge of the death secret until the Eastern train was 
gone. It left at four o’clock. She had no idea whether 
her father would go East or not. The thought worried 
her. She too felt it a waste of money with ten tons of 
coal delivered this morning and their cost bandied about. 
However, instinct told her that her father should know. 

He was not at his office when she tried to reach him. 
Her mother listening to Veronika’s efforts called shrilly: 

“Off with some hussy—that’s where he is.” 

“You fiend—you,” said Veronika mechanically, and 
kept on with her efforts. He called her finally from 
the Blakes, where there was to be a baby in whose birth 
he was assisting. Veronika gave him the news with an 
attempt at softening. Her grandmother meant nothing 
to her, and she felt her father’s agitation a little silly. 

Get Doctor Morse and send him over here quick, 
Ronny,” he said, “and I’m coming home.” 

That disturbed Veronika’s plans of course. She had 
expected that he would not be home for supper. How¬ 
ever, she found Doctor Morse and got him headed for 
the Blakes’ house, where he was to help “bring” Mrs. 
Blake s baby, about which, in spite of her father’s pro¬ 
fession, Veronika had limited information and mental 
pictures very much out of drawing. 


23 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“What’s he coming home for?” asked her mother. 
“Lazy loafer. Just an excuse. Everybody knew the old 
woman was about to die anyhow."” 

But the thing that surprised her daughter was that in 
Mrs. Pearse’s tone was a note of concern about some¬ 
thing—death perhaps. She was slightly and surprisingly 
hushed for some reason. 

Lily came in, vastly worried about the hat. She took 
it off and mopped it tenderly, wondering if the spots of 
snow would come out, bemoaning them. 

“Isn’t it a shame whenever I get anything decent that 
something like that has to happen? Why do we never 
have any luck?” 

“Did you have a good time?” asked Veronika. 

“Oh, good enough—the girls were sort of mean—I’ve 
got to have a. party, Ronny.” 

“How can you have a party when your father doesn’t 
give me enough to buy clothes?” 

They knew that was nonsense, but it was rubbed into 
them so much that it stuck in part. Neither girl paid 
any attention to the remark, but it recalled to Veronika 
the thing she had forgotten in the excitement about Lily’s 
hat. 

“Grandmother Pearse’s dead—father got a telegram.” 

“Is she?” 

“Um—father’s coming home. He seemed awfully 
sorry. I hope,” added Veronika severely to her mother, 
“that for once you’ll have the decency to leave him alone 
when his mother lies dead in her grave. Let him have 
his sorrow in peace.” 

“Much he’ll sorrow—” answered her mother. 

It was half past five. Supper had to be made. Veron¬ 
ika and Lily went to the kitchen bickering about who 


24 A Handmaid of the Lord 

should do this or that. Lily hated to get her hands in 
onions. She had little fastidiousnesses that Veronika 
lacked. So that it was Veronika who made the pudgy 
meat balls out of Hamburger steak and Lily who peeled 
the potatoes, a huge apron tied over her official best dress 
of brown rajah silk, her eyes still melancholy from dis¬ 
appointments at the party. Secretly Veronika ached for 
her. She was always aching for some one. She hated 
to have any one hurt, especially unexpectedly hurt, be¬ 
cause she knew too accurately how it felt. But there was 
no sentimentality in her manner. Expressed affection was 
absurd and caresses beyond measure silly. 

She tried a more subtle form of consolation. 

"I suppose Ellie Lewis was falling all over the boys 
as usual, with the pink silk ruffles sticking out all over 
her/’ 

That was it. Ellie Lewis was Lily’s object of envy. 
So, if you made her absurd, it restored Lily’s self-respect. 
She giggled. 

“She does make an awful fool of herself. But she 
has everything. There she was, called for by that crazy¬ 
looking chauffeur of theirs, offering to take all the boys 
home with her. Lights in the car inside—it looked like 
an advertisement.” 

Silly show-off stuff,” said Veronika, patting the meat 
ball fiercely in her instant comprehension of the fact that 
Lily had probably had to trudge off home alone with the 
snow falling on her beloved velvet hat, while Ellie waved 
her embryonic lovers into the limousine. 

Lily was depressed beyond cheering. She sighed that 
she might as well take off her dress now and went up¬ 
stairs, and Veronika opened an enthralling library book 


A Handmaid of the Lord 25 

called “The Pasteboard Crown,” which had been luring 
her, laid it open on the pantry shelf, and proceeded to 
set the table and read alternately, completely forgetful 
of Lily and her father. 

He came in a little later. Ronny heard the car run 
into the garage, the bang of the door and her father’s 
steps down the driveway toward the house. It was a 
little driveway and a little car. The garage had been a 
barn when Dr. Pearse had paid his calls with a horse 
and buggy, but, like everything else the Pearses owned, 
it stamped them as belonging to a class with pretensions. 

The outer kitchen door flew open with a flurry of 
wind, and the Doctor stamped in snow laden even in the 
passage from the garage to the house. 

Her first aghast and embarrassed amazement came 
from the fact that he looked as though he had been 
crying. She did not know what to say. 

“Snowing hard, isn’t it?” she said. 

“Good girl to get Doctor Morse so quickly,” answered 
her father, unheeding. “Where’s your mother?” 

Veronika shrugged. 

“She’s been hiding all day.” 

“Kept me from getting off to-night, didn’t she? Well, 
I wired—it’s all right. I’ll get off to-morrow and that 
will be in time.” 

“You’re going East?” gasped Veronika. 

Her father looked at her curiously as if apprehending 
suddenly how little grounding she had had in human 
emotion. 

“Poor little savage,” he said. “Yes, Ronny, I’m going, 
and I’m thinking seriously of taking you and Lily 
along.” 


26 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Mrs. Pearse, who had been, as often, listening, con¬ 
fronted them. 

“So that’s it?” she cried. “That’s the idea. The old 
woman’s not dead at all. Just planning to take my chil¬ 
dren away from me. I’d like to see you take them, that’s 
all, mister. I’d just like to see you.” 

“Well, you will,” he answered. “Veronika, I want you 
and Lily to get your clothes together and get ready to 
start with me to-morrow.” 

A violent paroxysm came over the woman’s face. 

“What do you mean?” she cried. “Do you think I’m 
going to get their clothes ready ?” 

“But we haven’t any clothes ready,” Veronika ob¬ 
jected, “we couldn’t, father.” 

“You will,” said the doctor, in a tone out of which 
everything seemed to have drained with which Veronika 
was familiar, “you will if you go naked.” 

The night was a night of madness. Supper, attempted, 
was abandoned by almost every one. On the table the 
balls of Hamburger steak, fried into fat-laden hardness, 
were hacked at by first one and then another. Dr. Pearse 
went upstairs and his wife followed him. He had a 
habit of retreating into silence. Perhaps in those silences 
he actually did not hear her. 

The girls set the table, rather carefully as was their 
way, and put the food upon it. Tom had come in, silent 
after a disappointing basketball game, and they all sat 
down except Mrs. Pearse, who refused to sit with them, 
as she often did, and paced to and fro in the dining-room 
as they ate. The shadow of events was on them all. 
The girls were half-scared by their father’s pronounce¬ 
ments, Tom had his mind partly on the game and partly 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


27 


on the fact that his mother was in a temper, and their 
father, with those embarrassing reddened eyes, hardly 
pretended to eat before he put his head down on his 
hands and groaned at his wife to stop. But she had no 
intention of stopping, not perhaps any capability of do¬ 
ing so. She raged on, insulting his family, his mother, 
his sister. 

“But what would happen to school if we went East 
now?” asked Veronika. 

“Is there any use making her worse? Drop it,” said 
Tom, nodding at his mother. His handsome blond face, 
the face that carried him anywhere, was surly. 

Their father answered. “No—let her get as bad as 
she wants. This is my turn to have my way and I’m 
going to have it, Annie, if it’s the last thing I do on 
earth. Those children are coming with me.” 

Mrs. Pearse seized an end of the tablecloth and jerked 
it roughly so that half the dishes tipped. Tom, raging 
now, flung a glass of water full in her face and she 
screamed. As they stood over the strewn food, all gaz¬ 
ing at the woman with the water dripping from her face, 
hysteria gleamed in every eye. Then Tom pushed out 
of the room and they heard the front door slam. He 
often did that, coming back late at night to lock himself 
in his room on the door of which he had ingeniously 
arranged a bolt that Mrs. Pearce could not disturb. 

The doctor left the room and the girls stood looking 
at each other. 

“Do you suppose he means it, Lily ? ,J asked Veron¬ 
ika. 

“Certainly he does—and Pm going to go,” said Lily. 
“But we’d better go up and get our clothes hid before 
she gets at them.” 


28 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


But they were too late. It was a common way Mrs. 
Pearse had to hide some article of clothing if she objected 
to some one’s going out. Only never with Tom. She 
feared Tom’s rages, so like her own. And at seventeen 
he was very strong and had none of his father’s dislike of 
physical violence. With the girls, whom she could still 
dominate, it was a common trick. 

They found where she had hidden Ronny’s best coat 
and dress and Lily’s things. They were in a bag in the 
attic and there was a tearing struggle when the things 
were found. Mazda burners were unscrewed from all the 
electric lights all over the house. Late that night Lily 
found that her best hat had been put in the sink and 
the water turned on it. Her scream and long hysterics 
were like an echo to the greater hysterics. The telephone 
rang. Dr. Pearse would come at once. Some woman 
was dying. Out he went, buttoned into his greatcoat, his 
face gray with fatigue, and the house fell silent. Dr. 
Pearse never gave his daughters any sedative, but that 
night he had broken his rule for Lily. She lay in bed 
strangely calm. 

When Tom came in, about midnight, he found Ronny 
with a candle stuck in the candlestick in the dining-room 
and the shades pulled down, cleaning up. In the uncer¬ 
tain light her face looked very mature. 

“Let it go,” said Tom. 

I can t. Besides that glass of water you threw will 
ruin the carpet if it s not mopped up. You go on out 
and get a glass of milk, Tom. Think there’s enough. 
There s some doughnuts too that she bought somewhere.” 

Tom went and brought the milk and doughnuts in to 
where Ronny cleaned laboriously. 

So father s going to take you East. The sooner we 


A Handmaid of the Lord 29 

all get out of here the better. I’ll be in college in two 
years and then I’m never coming back.” 

“I think it’s crazy,” said Ronny. “Why, there’d never 
be anything done here if Lily and I went off.” 

“Oh, she’d look out for me all right,” said Tom. 

“You haven’t any business being out so late, Tom,” 
his sister said irrelevantly. 

“This is a hell of a place to come back to.” 

“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “Is it any worse for you than 
the rest of us? Is there anything we can do?” 

“You can do what father says and beat it off East 
and not come back for a while. I wish he’d take me.” 

“How could we go?” worried Veronika. “How could 
we possibly?” The responsibility sat heavily upon her. 
She was skilled in struggle, and she guessed that her 
mother’s fury would spend itself in the night. By to¬ 
morrow if they could get their things together at all— 
The clock struck one. They heard their mother’s foot¬ 
steps in the upper hall, ready to renew attack if their 
father had come in. But Veronika knew that Mrs. Pearse 
had had time to realize what she had done to the seven- 
dollar hat and that the next attack might be plaintive 
instead of wild. 

“Go on up, Tom, and see if you can bully her into 
being decent for the rest of the night.” 

“Useless after the glass of water,” said Tom, and dis¬ 
appeared up the back stairs. She heard his door shut 
and the bolt drawn across it. Standing the broom on its 
stick in one corner of the kitchen, Veronika repeated her 
question to herself. “How could we go?” 

The candlelight wavering across Ronny’s face left her 
chubby cheeks in shadow and brought out the wisdom 
of her eyes, the unsoftened wisdom of eyes which might 


30 A Handmaid of the Lord 

have been those of a person of thirty instead of a girl 
of sixteen. Falling across her face from the unshaded 
eyes to the mouth, which hung wearily, there lay, like 
a welt, the mark of melancholy. 


CHAPTER III 


i 

O LD Mr. Pearse sat upright in his chair, a copy of 
the “Life of St. Francis of Assisi” in his hand. 
He was more than ever removed from triviality on 
this day of the burial of his wife. She who had been 
an old and ailing woman was now a suffering soul in 
purgatory, and he prayed inwardly and constantly for 
her release. No soft reminiscences of his life with the 
woman who had borne him eight children interfered with 
his sanctified thought of her. No gentle memory of 
Nora as a yielding bride, a boisterous young matron, 
diverted his eyes from the holy wraith that she now was 
in the shades of purgatory. Before him lay a black- 
bordered Mass card. 

Sitting opposite him in the back parlor, Veronika won¬ 
dered at her heredity. She had been told four times in 
the last day that she “looked like her grandmother,” the 
white, uninhabited, waxy creature who had been laid 
away with elaborate ritual. She was faint still from the 
journey to Westover which had been consummated over 
the fierce resistance of her mother and she was strange 
to this insistence on a purgatory with its living spirits 
begging prayers. A ghostly fear was over her as she 
watched the noble head of the old man so sternly con¬ 
centrated on immortality. Lily had gone with her aunt 
somewhere. She had wept at the funeral and they had 
all been sorry for the tender emotions of the girl. 
31 


32 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Ronny, alert at this first encounter with death, had not 
cried. She was stirred to her depths and desperately 
concerned over the fugitive spirit. 

It was cold—a still, sparkling cold, outside. Inside 
the gas lamp was lighted on the table beside her grand¬ 
father, and warm gusts of heat rose from the hot-air 
register. Ronny watched Mr. Pearse. She was already 
glib in the thin skeptic phrase that “one religion is as 
good as another. ,, But the concentrated Catholicism 
around her impressed her. If it were true—and it was 
hard to doubt to-day in the face of this deep belief 
around her—that souls needed help, she hated to think 
of that soul twirling in purgatory. Secretly she con¬ 
jured God, even while she superstitiously wondered if her 
prayers were any good, to excuse this one soul, this soul 
to which she felt a fearful kinship because its owner had 
looked like her. 

She was saddened to-night, basically because she was 
tired, and strange, partly because of her mother, who had 
cried hysterically when they had gone, until Veronika, 
always far too ready with her pity, would have stayed 
at home if she could. 

Her grandfather's eyes were upon her. Under the 
reef of his eyebrows they shone, remarkably blue, blue 
like a child’s eyes. 

“I hear them say you’re a clever girl,” he said. 

So she was used to being rated in the High School. 
She smiled in faint embarrassment. 

“But cleverness,” he went on, “is of no avail without 
the grace of God. Have you the grace of God?” 

“I hope so.” 

“ ’Tis strange then that you make the sign of the 
cross with your left hand.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 33 

She was staggered. The observation of such niceties 
had not occurred to her. 

“I hardly knew what I did in church. ,, 

He knew what he wished to know. 

“ ’Tis no matter/' he said gruffly. “No matter." In 
spite of her sixteen years Veronika had a way of look¬ 
ing desolatingly undefended, like a small ungunned fort¬ 
ress. 

2 

There were seven relatives for supper, besides Aunt 
Kate, who was her father’s sister and ran the house, and 
old Aunt Anne, no longer certain of her step nor of the 
one of her family for whom she sorrowed. Death had 
come often before in that old house as Aunt Anne knew. 
The children of her brother had come and some had 
lived and some had died. In her pocket hung a rosary, 
and her unsure fingers rested most easily upon that. 
The rest were aunts and uncles and several cousins. It 
seemed a banquet to the girls. Supper for twelve in Val¬ 
halla would have been impossible, but here it appeared 
to be simple. The dining-room was paneled to its height 
in old cherry, the varnish seamed here and there, but 
it caught the light of the gas and the dimmest reflection 
flickered there. Veronika loved that. She felt distin¬ 
guished. Lily’s spirits were returning rapidly. She had 
done her hair in a new way which she had seen adorning 
one of the High School girls at home and was conscious 
of looking her prettiest. 

It was the accepted formula that each guest had come 
to cheer the old man, though the patriarch sat silently 
through his meal, eating little and leaving the table be- 


34 A Handmaid of the Lord 

fore the others. They heard him mount the stairs slowly 
and heavily and a kind of relaxation spread immediately. 
There was a general diffusion of comfort. It was clear 
to Ronny from what she heard and saw and from the 
temper of their grief that it was an ordered unpassion- 
ate sorrow for one whose death left a void in habit 
rather than an agony in the soul. Her grandmother had 
been ill for a long time. Mourning for her was em¬ 
bodied in reminiscences of her life, in the knowledge 
sharply borne in by a funeral that some one of the group 
must be next to go. If these relatives had not been sad 
it was apparent that they would have been gay together. 
They were clever. They held up each other’s idiosyn¬ 
crasies for mockery. A ripple of merriment spread at 
the story of the remote and eager cousin, who had put 
in her usual struggle at a family funeral for a front place 
in the procession that followed the hearse. 

Again was Veronika’s likeness to her grandmother dis¬ 
cussed. 

“She has the Pearse forehead though.” 

“Does she look at all like her mother, Francis?” 

“No,” said Doctor Pearse, “it is Lily who is a Miller.” 

Lily wriggled and blushed under contemplation. 
Veronika did not like it. She disliked the occupation of 
her by either Pearses or Lindons. Veronika had always 
cherished the hope that she had been a foundling. Cir¬ 
cumstantial evidence was hemming her in. 

“What are you to do with them, Francis? Follow the 
Pearse tradition? Marry off one of them and make a 
nun of the other?” 

Veronika’s chin straightened. She glanced at the aunt 
who made the careless, half-unkind inquiry. She knew 


A Handmaid of the Lord 35 

what she meant by it. Lily was the pretty one. She 
answered for her father. 

“There’s too much to do in this world to shut yourself 
up in a convent.” 

Every one laughed. Veronika’s remark came flatly 
with the full air of quotation. 

“So you wouldn’t like to be a nun.” 

“I’d die,” answered Veronika succinctly. 

She caught her father’s glance of admonition and bent 
her head over her plate again. She was conscious that 
she had merely been absurd and a swelling grew in 
her throat. 

Later, as they went upstairs to their room, her father 
spoke to her. 

“You are a guest here, Ronny. You must try to please 
your relations and not be a silly snobbish girl. What is 
there to be snobbish about?” 

That was where they always stopped Veronika. She 
didn’t know what there was to be snobbish about. The 
question came in school from irritated girls, from her 
mother, from Lily, all of them sensing the eager spirit 
in her. She couldn’t answer. She did not know. She 
had to let it pass always, for she knew how she would 
have been mocked if she had taken that cherished word 
“aristocratic” out of her mind, if she had tried to ex¬ 
plain the guidance which she followed. 

She said good night and went into the room she was 
to share with Lily. Her sister was already in bed, her 
curly hair loose on the pillow, more like a picture-book 
child than ever. 

“It’s warm, Ronny,” she said. “Hurry up and jump 
in. I’ve a hot water bottle here.” 


36 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Veronika undressed. She was too tired even for talk. 
All she wanted was the comfort of the bed and the 
sense of her sister’s relaxed body beside her. 

“Father doesn’t intend to have us go back to Valhalla 
this year if they’ll keep us here,” said Lily. 

“Who told you so?” 

“I heard them talking of school—he and Aunt Kate.” 

“But who’s going to look after the house at home?” 

“I suppose she is,” said Lily, dealing with her mother 
in italics. 

“One would think you’d never lived there,” answered 
Veronika crossly. “It will go to rack and ruin.” 

“Well, you can’t do anything about it, can you? If 
father wants us to stay here we’ll have to stay.” 

Veronika swallowed. She had known of course that 
this was in the air, that her father had not brought them 
all this way for a few weeks’ visit. But at the definable 
sense of separation she ached. The old responsibilities 
tugged at her. They were burdens, but they belonged 
to her. She had been brought up to struggle and they 
did her no kindness in releasing her so sharply. 

“And I think they want to make Catholics out of us.” 

“This isn’t the Middle Ages. They can’t make us. 
Do you like it here, Lil ?” 

“I should say I do. They’re all so nice to us. I’m 
glad that—that thing is out of the house though. I 
couldn’t sleep in the house with a dead person. I’m 
glad her room was at the other end of the hall. Come 
closer, Ronny.” 

Veronika’s arm slipped under her sister’s neck and 
Aunt Kate, coming in to see if they were comfortable, 
found them so and tiptoed out again. But Veronika 
was not asleep. She lay with her eyes shut and thought 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


37 


of Valhalla. The furnace would go out. Her mother 
would forget it and you couldn’t count on Tom to stoke 
it regularly. She wondered if any one had laid a thin 
layer of coal on for the night. Her mother always put 
the coal on in a heap and it burned out before the next 
morning. 

Lily was asleep, but in the room across the hall some 
one was muttering. Ronny listened for a long while. 
She knew that her grandfather slept there and wondered 
if there was anything that she could do, if he were ill. 
Perhaps she should get up and see if he wanted any¬ 
thing. 

The muttering went on. Mindful of her ignorance of 
the customs of the house she opened her door cautiously 
and crept down the hall. Her grandfather’s door stood 
open a crack and through it she could see in the room, 
half lit with moonlight, the old man kneeling by his 
bed, a gaunt, night-shirted figure with a suit coat over 
his shoulders and a rosary in his hand. He was praying 
for his wife’s soul. 

Across the gap of their ages and their knowledge, 
Veronika’s mind leapt to meet the mysticism and the 
wonder of the belief of the old man. She knew that he 
was suffering. Back in her room she fell by the bed. 
It seemed to her that she could almost hear the plaintive 
spirit wailing in a shadowy, wind-driven place that was 
purgatory. The winds were cold and gray like curling 
smoke and the ghosts were at their mercy. Meager 
spirits that had been starved for prayers were there, 
unlucky ones that needed only one more petition to let 
them out and that last one failed them. She saw them 
toss and tumble, heard their thin shrieks and among 
them was the new ghost, the wraith that was her 


38 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


grandmother, unaccustomed, frightened, quivering. Her 
grandmother was no longer the old waxen body. She 
was like Veronika, tremulous, hating hurt. 

With her face deep in her quilt she prayed desperately, 
soundlessly, in the intimate bargaining with God that 
was her custom. 

“Let her out, God. Let her out. I’ll be a Catholic 
if you do.” 


CHAPTER IV 


IXyTICHAEL discovered Veronika. Lily had capti- 
**-*-*■ vated every one else from the moment of her ap¬ 
pearance, but Veronika remained aloof. She was proud 
of Lily’s triumphs and it never occurred to her to try 
to imitate them. But Michael, looking Lily over when 
he had come in one day after the funeral, had turned to 
Veronika and tried out on her a few Rabelaisian state¬ 
ments to which she responded with interest and a quick 
fastening of her mood on his. 

Michael was the brightest star in the whole family 
constellation. In the society of Westover, organized for 
a hundred years, the wall between Catholic and Protes¬ 
tant society was built high and thick. It took Michael 
to jump over it, lightly, casually, as if the wall was not 
really there. He jumped because he liked to jump and 
not because he coveted what lay on the more aristocratic 
side of the wall. He liked as well to sit with his old 
uncle, Veronika’s grandfather, and get him to tell Irish 
stories which he would tell no one else, the tales of the 
poor silly fellow who coveted the scrapin’s of the pot, of 
“Michael Brayton atein’ bacon,” and such lore. Michael 
had an eye for the picturesque and a flair for people, 
and back of the freckles and pallor of Veronika he sensed 
the same eagerness for living that beset him. 

He was twenty-nine and pretended that he did as he 
pleased, earned an easy living at the law and vibrated 
for his amusements between the old stone houses which 
were the strongholds of Westover society, the life at 
the army post which skirted Westover and the back room 
39 


40 A Handmaid of the Lord 

of Giuseppe Allemino’s, the Italian padrone, where garlic 
hung from the ceiling and the Italian talked politics while 
the eternally pregnant Mrs. Allemino regaled them with 
wine. 

All these things he might not have been able to do if 
he had not been as handsome as it is easily possible for 
a man to be and quite without small ambitions. West- 
over was small and he stretched it to its limits to make 
it amusing, for it held him after all. His mother was 
old and infirm and his younger brother struggled with 
a disease that neither drugs nor diversion seemed to pal¬ 
liate. 

It was soon the family theory that Veronika was too 
old for her age and should be made young. She hated 
the attempt, recognizing it under every form in which 
it was made. But Michael did not try to make her young. 
He took her about with him and sharpened her taste for 
life which already was none too dull. 

But he was only the trimming of her life in Westover. 
There was the convent. Black gloves in politeness class, 
feet crossed at the proper angle, deft courtesies and 
Veronika secretly smiling at it all even while the delight¬ 
ful fastidiousness of it captivated her. Perhaps in such 
exactitudes lay the best of things. 

Scenes stood out as if she watched a play, so unab¬ 
sorbed was she. 

The class in Christian Doctrine. Mother Grace with 
her face that was thin and pointed like a candle flame 
that has burned steadily for a long time. Doctrine start¬ 
ing from an assumption, somewhere hidden under quan¬ 
tities of statement that Veronika turned over and over 
to get at the assumption. One could never find it in 
time. Frances Braden being shocking. 


41 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Reverend Mother, may I ask a question?” 

“Frances ?” 

“When at the end of the mass the priest says, ‘Ite, 
Missa est’—that the mass is ended, why does the choir 
sing ‘Thanks be to God’?” 

The flame leaping in Mother Grace’s cheeks. Frances, 
impish under her black veil, kneeling before the altar 
in penance. It wasn’t very funny, thought Veronika, 
but it was daring. 

In the French class was the worst embarrassment. 
The class turned its back on the teacher and prayed 
rapidly before the lesson. 

“Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grace”—easy diction, 
the smoothness of conversation. Veronika could not pray 
like that. Her public school French was limited to trans¬ 
lation. With the dictionary beside her she could read 
her Daudet, but slipping through these almost metrical 
prayers, following the unslowing conversation of the 
class with its instructor was impossible. She was afraid 
to speak. She could not slur the edges of her words 
together as the others did, and when she tried she slurred 
words which should have been left sharp and separate. 

She studied Psychology. That was better. The sci¬ 
ence of the soul or spirit. Psyche was the spirit, the 
spirit given by the living God, the sentient soul. She 
felt her soul now, like a formless, chiffon-like substance 
waving within her. When she was a child she had always 
thought of it as a lump. This was something she wanted 
to find out about, something whose intimation made her 
feel learned and clever. Psychology, the study of the 
living soul. 

History was a story of the church, marching through 
the centuries, a militant church, making Henry kneel in 


42 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


the snow at Canossa. You couldn’t do that sort of 
thing now. Imagine doing it to a president. The 
thought of a president brought up visions of a litho¬ 
graphed face nailed on fences, torchlight processions, 
Republican rallies. Henry in the snow at Canossa was 
preferable. 

Along with it all ran things about herself. 

In the convent she had to wear the uniform of black 
pleated skirt and blouse with tiny collars and cuffs of 
lawn. It released her from the clothes she had worn in 
Valhalla, red dresses, stuff dresses that brought out the 
incompletion of her face. The black toned her down. 
Something, good food, the finishing of adolescence, was 
changing her appearance. Her hair had a luster now. 
The freckles were disappearing. 

She was to have a suit and hat for the street. The 
suit was blue and the slim slashed sides of the jacket 
outlined the smoothness of her hips. She was slim. The 
saleswoman said she had a lovely figure and a feeling of 
delicious faintness came in Veronika’s chest. No one had 
ever said anything like that before. It was magic. The 
hat was of blue straw, and from the front to the back of 
it ran a ridge of tiny crushed pink roses. 

Ah! said Michael. Look at Gloria! I always 
knew you would be a knockout, Ronny.” 

A shiver went over Veronika from head to foot. 
These pleasant realities frightened her. She preferred 
imaginings, where she was safer. 

She and Michael discussed things, sitting in the Greek’s 
candy shop, one Saturday night. The Greek was one 
of Michael’s clients and Michael liked to draw him out, 
make him talk about what he would do if he went back 
to his own country. The tall slim foreigner, whose 


A Handmaid of the Lord 43 

beauty was so wasted in a town which considered all 
southern Europeans greasy, hung around their table and 
plied Veronika with favors, begging her choice among 
boxes of candy whose covers had pictures of high colored 
ladies with their heads a-tilt, and gayish bows of thin 
satin ribbon. They always ordered the same things, 
ginger ale for Michael, caramel sundae for Veronika. 

Michael was tired. She could see it in his determina¬ 
tion to sit there and be nonchalant and ridiculous. Once 
in a while he would get up and make the mechanical 
piano jingle its horrible tunes and call out to the Greek 
—“That’s a wonderful instrument you have there.” The 
proprietor would smile with joy and Michael gleaned 
some amusement. 

“After all,” he said to Veronika, “it’s not so different 
from Rachmaninoff pounding his Steinway for your 
Aunt Kate to sigh over or Lily diddling scales. Ham¬ 
mers hitting on strings. Why isn’t this simpler? You 
don’t have to look at anybody anyway. Let’s try it 
again.” 

“You’re awfully tired,” Veronika told him. 

He looked derisive. 

“You have to worry, don’t you? Solicitude is the 
sign of the female. Develop it prettily and learn to use 
it. What are you worrying about me for ? Haven’t you 
got Valhalla and Lily on your mind?” 

“You’re not on my mind,” said Veronika. She was 
no match for him, verbally, but she could follow his 
absurdities, and she knew that they were not signs of 
high spirits. There was something in the air which she 
had not been able to find out about. It had to do with 
Michael and Michael’s friend at the Army Post. 

“What is, then?” 


44 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Nothing.” 

“Not even the bells of the convent—” 

“Of course, I’d like to know what's going to happen 
to me next year. I can’t stay in the convent. I ought to 
be back home now.” 

“Why ought you?” 

“They must need me. One of us. Lily's so much 
younger. She can stay in the convent. She likes it.” 

“She can stay there,” said Michael, “until she begins 
to go out and make trouble for men. That's what Lily’s 
due for.” 

“Will she?” 

Veronika wanted him to go on with that, but he 
dropped it. He was always doing that with her, skipping 
from subject to subject. She understood perfectly that 
he did not wish her to understand him, that she was a 
relief to him because she was so young, and he could 
pretend she didn't understand and because he liked her. 

“I think you should study a lot of things. Not crazy 
college stuff. But go to places where you could get 
knowledge.” 

“Couldn't afford it.” 

“Oh, yes. Old Francis has got plenty of money. I'll 
have to fix it up. Ask one of my highbrow friends—my 
blue-blooded platonic friends. You ought not to stop 
with the convent. Learn something without the grace of 
God.” 

“I haven't any too much of that, yet.” 

He changed. 

“You want to learn about the church,” he said. 
“Please your grandfather. Look at the noble old Roman. 
His backbone is solid Catholicism. Besides religions help 
women if they don't begin to whine. See what I mean?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 45 

Veronika, who had sat in the Christian Doctrine class 
and listened to gentle absolutism and been puzzled, un¬ 
derstood perfectly. 

They got up and left the Greek’s place. Outside, be¬ 
side the curb, stood Michael’s car, and Veronika climbed 
in. It was late and the city was very still. They went 
at an incredible rate through the broad streets until they 
came to a road along the river. 

“Home—or a ride ?” asked Michael. “Are you tired ?” 

“A ride—unless Aunt Kate will fuss.” 

Michael laughed. “She’s glad to have you with me, 
Ronny. There’s a family theory that you keep me out 
of temptation.” 

She lost most of that. 

The road was broad, and they sped along silently. 
Michael rarely talked when he drove. Once he stopped 
the car at a bend in the river and they sat silent, watching 
the moon try experiments with its reflection in the water. 
On towards the little inn where Fred Hackett served 
black bass and chicken dinners. 

His place was lighted, and outside it stood several 
cars, army cars, Veronika noted. 

“Hell,” said Michael, “I was going to take you in.” 
There was suppressed excitement in his tone. “Do you 
mind waiting just a minute, Ronny?” He left her in 
the car and went striding up the porch of the inn, tall, 
dark, incredibly handsome, eager. Veronika waited. 
She waited until her legs ached and she shifted them, 
then sat crossways on the seat. He did not come. The 
car was parked in the shadow under a maple tree, and 
she could hear the laughter within the inn, see people 
pass the windows, the neatness of uniformed men, women. 

She waited. Then at length she knew that Michael 


46 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


had forgotten her. He must have forgotten her. She 
got stiffly out of the car, for one foot had gone to sleep, 
and made her way to the windows which were near the 
ground, keeping in shadow lest, within, they see her face. 
She was right. She saw them all in Hackett’s rather 
bare dining-room, sitting about the long table. Michael 
had evidently joined a party already gathered, for his 
chair was drawn up informally beside a woman who 
faced Veronika. There was a short, red-faced, fat offi¬ 
cer—that was Doane—drunken Doane, Veronika had 
heard Michael say, as they passed him one day, and a 
tall one with white hair and a clean-shaven face that 
was full of hard lines—others—women, all in veils and 
hats. The one next to Michael turned her face towards 
him and Veronika gazed with something rising higher 
and higher in her throat. Michael’s eyes were smiling at 
his companion, but his mouth was not. His mouth was 
almost trembling. The woman’s shoulder leaned towards 
him. Over her hat and drawn loosely over her chin 
was a motor veil of soft lavender, and her face stood out 
from its mauve wrappings—delicate, soft but firm flesh, 
color light in her cheeks, eyes that smiled and lips— 
Veronika, standing outside, felt her own gawky childish¬ 
ness, moistened the line of red that marked her own 
mouth. Everything she had ever read of romance was 
before her. The woman’s lips looked as if they had been 
kissed—often—and Veronika, who had never in her life 
seen passionate demonstration between men and women, 
knew that Michael was suffering because he could not 
kiss them. 

She could not bear it. She went back to the shadow 
of the car and sat hunched in her seat, trying now to 
keep warm. She remembered the robe in the back of 


A Handmaid of the Lord 47 

the car suddenly and pulled it out, wrapping it around 
her closely. She ached for Michael, but little excited 
thrills ran over her. 

She was asleep. 

Michael woke her with his startled exclamation. 

“My God, if I didn’t forget the child!” 

She stirred sleepily. 

“I didn’t mind waiting,” she said. “I guessed you’d 
forgotten.” 


CHAPTER V 


i 

“Now of my three score years and ten 
Twenty will not come again, 

And take from seventy springs a score 
It only leaves me fifty more.” 

T VERONIKA chanted it challengingly. Fifty more— 
* they stretched out endlessly, like packages to be un¬ 
tied, boxes to be opened. She loved the thought of the 
fifty, each neatly marked “Veronika Pearse” and lying 
ready in some eternity. They were beautiful boxes, she 
was sure of that. Not like the ragged, battered boxes 
that waited for some people. Hers were neat and each 
a little larger than the one preceding it, as was proper. 

That was as they had been for the last three years. 
The first box had held the year of convent and the cli¬ 
mactic end of it when she had become a Catholic. Michael 
had given her her watch. The agony and joy and dis¬ 
turbance of that first communion was gone now, dimming 
in remembrance. The slim gold watch remained, on a 
ribbon on her wrist. 

The second year. Years began in September and ended 
in June, college years. January was artificial. In be¬ 
tween September and June lay summer in Valhalla. Val¬ 
halla was unchanged except for strange excrescences of 
new wealth and social endeavors. The hotel had a roof 
garden. But after the tangled, painful summer she had 
come back to Westover to college. Nothing, not even 
the scenes at the train, could prevent her. She went to 
48 


A Handmaid of the Lord 49 

Michael’s house for her shore vacations, to stay with his 
old mother and Aloysius. This was an Easter holiday. 
They had all thought that the friction would be too great 
if her grandfather felt that some one from his house 
was attending a Protestant college, the college which 
skirted Westover. Lily stayed at her grandfather’s house 
for week-ends. 

“You know of course it will mean that Lily will get 
the old man’s money?” asked Michael. 

“Don’t talk that way,” said Veronika. 

“It’s important,” said Michael rather sharply. “Kate 
has her own little bit of money. She’s independent. 
Aunt Anne will die any time. If Lily is in a convent 
and you’re in a college it will mean that Lily will get 
what money there is. And between us I think there may 
be quite a bit.” 

“I don’t care about the money,” scorned Veronika. 
“I’d a lot sooner have Lily get it, if she does. Besides 
I hate talking about a live person’s money. But I do hate 
to hurt him. He’s so old and he believes it so. Doesn’t 
he see that if I’m ever to earn my living I’ll have to 
have more than convent? That even father wants 
it—” 

“Well, you can’t change him, you know.” 

“I know the way he feels though,” Veronika fin¬ 
ished. 

Yet she had gone to college and Lily had stayed in 
the convent and learned to sing. 

The third year. The last box she had opened. Mostly 
it had college in it, intimations of learning, sudden 
friendships, triumphs that had flattened, disappointments 
that were now stingless. College was well enough, but 
it paled beside the things she learned from Michael. She 


50 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


knew his friends now. She knew the people at the Army 
Post. And the plastic Lily, who seemed to have lost 
all traces of Valhalla, and was slim and beautiful still, 
wore a black dress with the broad band of blue of the 
Children of Mary across her breast. When she sang 
the Adeste at Christmas people had wept at its sweetness. 
Yet, for all that, even though she knew the nuns hoped 
Lily would enter, Veronika was far from sure. Lily 
told her things she held from the others. 

Tom was in the last box too. She had found him 
last vacation, no longer a surly handsome boy, but a 
young man, using his father’s house as he did his father’s 
purse, without sentiment, for his convenience. He too 
had given her confidence. He was full of young man 
aspirations and plans to be carried out at sufficient dis¬ 
tance from Valhalla. He hated, as did Lily, the shabbi¬ 
ness, the ill-repair, the confusion and shame of the house 
where they had been brought up and where the genius 
was still disorder. Veronika knew they were right. But 
she could not destroy a lurking feeling of loyalty to Val¬ 
halla. She had secret visions of changing the whole 
place, making it over into a home for them all. Ugly 
as it was, it was her own. 

Fifty more springs—enough to do anything that she 
might wish. Birthdays give you a sense of power, 
thought Veronika. 

She went to her grandfather’s house to find Lily. The 
old man was sitting, as he always was, in the back par¬ 
lor that was also library. High ranges of books covered 
the walls. He sat by the table in his chair. His arteries 
were hardening and he knew it. As his time grew nearer 
to shake off all mortal connection he determined to dis¬ 
count mortality more and more. The shrewd house- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 51 

holder in him had insisted on perfect arrangement of his 
affairs. But that was done and he sat all day now in 
his brown leather chair, shabby and decrepit, fixing his 
mind on a second life that must also be definite in all 
its arrangements. 

Veronika stood by his chair. 

“I brought you some Prince Albert,” she said, drop¬ 
ping the little tin can of tobacco on the table beside him. 

“Here’s the skeptic,” answered her grandfather; 
“here’s the one who courts the heresies of the prince 
of darkness.” 

Veronika sat down beside him. She had adopted some¬ 
thing of Michael’s way, without his impudence. 

“But I haven’t missed Mass once,” she told him. 
“Think what an example I am to the unbelievers.” 

Under that ever thicker thatch of eyebrow his eyes 
twinkled at her almost merrily. 

Lily came in. She had the little mannerisms of the 
convent now, the quiet walk, the careful sitting position. 

“I had such a time getting away,” she said, “but I 
would do it. So they let me at last.” And she smiled, 
her lovely free smile that set her face in motion. 

Veronika knew that Lily had done it by simple insist¬ 
ence that she would, not by raising her voice or making 
trouble. Her ways were subtler. 

“How are the holy women?” asked Mr. Pearse. 

Lily shot a quick glance at Veronika. She had come 
to the point at which the holy women rather bored her. 
But she answered with gay courtesy. “You follow the 
ways of God,” said her grandfather, “but your sister does 
not. Why don’t you try to influence her?” 

Again his eyes sparkled. Veronika had an inkling that 
sometimes came to her that her grandfather was fond 


52 A Handmaid of the Lord 

of her, also that he would have liked to see a good pitched 
battle between skeptic and believer. 

But Aunt Kate was there now and would have no 
more of religion. She understood the need and also the 
place for devotion, and while it was natural for old 
people to become absorbed in religion they should not 
be allowed to be nuisances. Aunt Kate bustled through 
life reasonably. She had been one of a large family 
and had seen the family scatter. She knew the taste of 
tragedy; she knew the inevitable pick-up of life after 
tragedy; she knew upheaval and trouble, and she had 
woven all these things into a huge workaday emotional 
apron which she wore and which family troubles and 
difficulties might spot so long as she could preserve in 
cleanliness her dress underneath the apron, a dress of sen¬ 
timent and romance which was oddly unfitted to her 
spreading hips and the loose flesh beneath her chin. She 
had come into the dower of the motion pictures late and 
she loved them. In the dark of the cinema house she could 
quiver and weep a little and reflect on the terrible but 
enthralling vices of the world. 

She had learned to love Lily and romanticized her. 
But in speaking of her fondness for Lily she always 
added “fond of Lily and Veronika too.” 

In Aunt Kate s room Lily was speaking of the dance 
at the Army Post. 

“Reverend Mother wouldn't want you to go,” Aunt 
Kate reminded her. 

I must go/' said Lily. “Simply must. I haven't 
worn that new dress of mine once, Aunt Kate. Ronny’s 
going.” 

“Veronika's twenty. Besides she will be with her 
cousin.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


53 


“She’ll be with Stewart Royden, won’t you, Ron?” 

Veronika laughed at her aunt’s face, mixture of dismay 
and pride. 

“We’re to be a party,” she explained. “It’s Stewart’s 
party. I can take Lily along as well as not. She’ll spend 
the night with me.” 

This was formality. Lily meant to go, and the girls 
knew that their aunt was flattered that they were to be 
in Stewart Royden’s party. 

“I’ve a present for you, Ron,” said her sister. 

She unwrapped it herself, and it fell from the thin 
tissue paper, a great length of chiffon dyed to the color 
of a leaping flame. 

“Hemstitched it myself. Like it?” 

“It’s gorgeous—beautiful. And what a strange thing 
to come out of a convent. But you should keep it.” 

“Can’t wear the color,” said Lily ruefully. 

She knew exactly, as she stood there in her black serge 
dress, what colors she should wear. Even the chrysalis 
of black was fitting. 

“I’d wear that color if I couldn’t.” Veronika threw 
the scarf about her shoulders. 

Her sister looked at her appraisingly. 

“You know you are good-looking,” she answered. 
“Your eyes are good and your whole brown tone is 
good.” But as she spoke Lily’s eyes strayed to herself 
in the mirror. She despised Aunt Kate’s mirror, but she 
forgot and looked in it. The glass had a blotch in it 
halfway up. 

“Some day I shall throw a stone through that looking- 
glass,” she warned Aunt Kate. “It’s actually worse than 
the convent ones and they’re made especially so you’ll 
take the veil!” 


54 A Handmaid of the Lord 

2 

Veronika trod lightly through things that happened 
all day. She often tried to step quietly through events 
so that she might not arouse any ill luck. Because, if 
your good luck persisted too long, something unpleasant 
was sure to happen and she wanted this one day to be 
perfect. 

She hoped that Michael would be gay. One couldn't 
be sure of him any more, and there were plenty of rea¬ 
sons why. He knew that people talked about him, but 
that would not have done more than amuse him. But 
Veronika, strengthening her knowledge of people and 
events every day, was not sure that the old affair with 
Captain Tracy's wife had not been revived. Michael 
didn’t trust Mary Tracy, but he couldn't keep away 
from her. That was what Aloysius said. Aloysius 
Pearse, Michael’s sick brother, regarded them from his 
padded chair, Lily and Veronika, dressed for the party. 
Lily s dress, a wisp of gold-colored cloth, managed to 
be more sophisticated than Veronika's. Yet Veronika 
was at her best. Her dress was pale green chiffon and 
Veronika had planned its making. It hung straight and 
slim from under her hardly defined breasts, and tiny caps 
of sleeves covered the ridges of her shoulders. 

“It has no style at all—that dress," said Lily of the 
convent, “and yet it does bring you out, Ronny." 

Veronika, who was flushed because .she had forgotten 
warnings and used soap and water on her face, wheeled 
for the benefit of Aloysius. 

“Am I gorgeous?" 

No Lily's gorgeous. You have what my respected 
and disreputable brother would call charm." 


55 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

The sight of Aloysius became suddenly distinct, sitting 
there humped in his chair, his mind running over them 
all, sentient, feeling as clearly as Michael, but unable to 
do anything with his feelings except to resolve them 
into clever phrases. Veronika was disturbed by the fact 
of contrast, but one had to be careful not to show sym¬ 
pathy to Aloysius. It seemed that if he could get noth¬ 
ing but pity and solicitude from life he preferred to be 
destitute of relationship to it. He could distance Michael 
in abusive raillery, and Michael never gave him any of 
the conventional lowering of stringent tone when he 
came in contact with the invalid. Michael’s mockery and 
abuse were two things that kept Aloysius alive. 

“Keep away from that blonde to-night, Mick,” Aloysius 
urged sardonically, as Michael came downstairs, his good 
looks and slightly thickening figure outlined in black and 
white. 

“That is not in my hands, Brother Aloysius.” 

“If she whistles you will run.” 

“If she whistles,” agreed Michael, “though she’s go¬ 
ing off somewhat in her looks. Her powder no longer 
assimilates well and she has a faint line here”—he drew 
an imaginary one under the curve of Lily’s chin—“here 
where the fair Lily has none.” 

“One of my consolations,” said Aloysius, “is that, 
though afflicted with a hump, I shall not be the principal 
figure in a divorce suit.” 

“You don’t know what you miss,” chuckled Michael. 

Veronika liked to hear them talk that way. She liked 
to feel that the thing could be talked about. It made 
it so much less ugly. Sitting beside Stewart Royden half 
an hour later, in his car, joggling along toward the army 
post, she discovered that her mind was still on Michael. 


56 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


It was his romance which interested her vicariously 
rather than this possibly present one of her own. Her 
own seemed too unlikely. Stewart was not talking. He 
was puffing at a cigarette as he drove the coupe. He 
rarely made an effort unless he had to, and Veronika 
knew that the burden lay on her. But she could think 
only of absurd beginnings. Suppose she began with any 
of the things that stumbled through her mind, that she 
wondered how women made themselves irresistible like 
Mary Tracy. That her dress had cost twenty-three dol¬ 
lars and she had to get through April on seventeen she 
had left, that if Stewart could see her mother fighting 
he might not descend that stone Parrish-like flight of 
stairs that led to the Royden house and come for her. 
She wondered if he had ever been on the verge of a 
divorce. One couldn't begin conversation with that. 
She had to begin pretty soon. After waiting this long 
one should say something clever. “Here we are,” said 
Stewart, stopped the car and got out to help her. “You’ll 
have to jump over that puddle. I parked right in the 
wrong place, per usual.” He held out both arms as 
if to a child, and as she jumped from the car step to the 
sidewalk, caught her, one firm hand on each side of her 
waist. He held her and smiled. 

There was still the old worry. Across the mess hall, 
where they danced, she saw Lily float off with an officer. 
How did she learn to dance like that? In a convent! 
She wouldn’t make any mistakes. In her mind Veronika 
had insisted on deferring this moment when she would 
have to dance as well as she could and perhaps be unsuc¬ 
cessful. 

It wasn’t so bad with Stewart. She had memorized 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


57 


that little walk with which he always started as if he 
were fitting his hand to the back of her waist. Besides 
he wouldn’t care. There she was, on his foot. 

“I am sorry,” she said. “I always get on people’s 
feet.” 

“No—” he said, rather comfortingly, “you don’t, and 
besides you can if you like. I don’t mind at all. Here 
—drop the college girl stuff. Let me lead.” 

He led so easily. He walked her around, kept her 
held tight. Mrs. Tracy swept her up and down with 
her slow smile as she passed. Veronika guessed that she 
too knew that Stewart was being kind to his partner. 

Quickly she tried to measure other things up against 
the importance of this. An old trick and one which 
had failed her often. Life was deeper than this, farther 
in than this. But suppose this were the hedge you must 
penetrate if you were to get at it. Priests in the pulpit, 
professors at their desks telling you about living. But 
when you came actually to living, you were fenced in 
perhaps because your feet didn’t go in easy rhythms. 
Because you couldn’t remember. 

“Don’t dance with me—don’t you see I can’t?” she 
said suddenly to Stewart. 

It was her tone that stopped him, faint in melodrama. 
He stopped at the wall—he was making her circle walls 
—and laughed delightedly. His face, sagged a little 
with the look of a man who has anticipated his next half- 
hour, sprang back to interest. His eyes smiled down at 
her, gray, accustomed eyes meeting hers which were blue 
like little pools of tragedy. 

“You mustn’t take it so seriously 1” he laughed. “Don’t 
work at it.” 


58 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“You can’t help working when it doesn’t come easily. 
When you tread on people and your face gets hotter and 
hotter.” 

“Come, we’ll go get cool.” 

“Already!” she sighed. “I’ll be doing it all evening. 
Always,” she added, as they went off, “I am sure that 
next time it will be easy and I’ll float along like Lily. 
Then some one does something you don’t expect—you 
turned twice there—” 

She was conscious that he was hardly listening. His 
eyes were on her, but they were abstracted—as if he were 
figuring something out about her. He looked as old as 
Michael now—looked thirty. Not as good looking as 
Michael—a little too square in the shoulders, but clever, 
rich, sought after. 

“Listen—I’m not going to spoil your evening,” de¬ 
clared Veronika, “you take me out there in one of those 
comfortable leather chairs and go back and dance. I’ll 
just sit for a while.” She was eager. She put her hand 
on his shoulder, urging him. Suddenly his hand leapt to 
catch hers and moved it, pressed it into his coat. She felt 
his heart scudding heavily along. 

“Don’t do that sort of thing, Veronika,” he said, “it’s 
dangerous.” 

She said nothing, only stood looking at him as he still 
held her hand close to him. And her own heart began 
to trip faster, in uneven rhythm like her dancing. 

“You know,” Stewart told her, “Mick’s given me my 
order. He says I’m to leave you alone. That you’re 
too young. But I’m not sure I shall.” 

“Too young for what?” asked Veronika, and sliced 
years off her actual age by that definiteness. 

Stewart let her hand drop. They were standing in a 


A Handmaid of the Lord 59 

little alcove, and other people who had finished the dance 
were coming out. 

She was dancing now with Colonel Tracy, who was 
telling her how beautiful Lily was. Colonel Tracy was 
white-haired and immaculate. His skin was brown and 
neat, nicer than the skin of most young men. Veronika 
thought that if she had been married to him she 
would not have flirted with other men. Colonel Tracy 
slowed her to a waltz. That was easier. How decent 
men were and how humiliating it was when they had 
to be decent about your dancing. She knew that he was 
glad it was over. He led her to his wife and Michael. 

Veronika spoke to Mrs. Tracy, who was pleasant to 
her, and she thought that Michael had been lying when 
he said the powder showed. It showed so little on Mary 
Tracy’s beautifully pale cheeks that you wanted to stroke 
them. The line beneath her chin must have been one of 
Michael’s brutalities too. There was no line. She showed 
no trace of age except that the passage of time had worn 
off all irregularities of manner, all gaucheries. Her voice 
was lazy and her eyes were slow. Before her Veronika 
always felt half finished and fidgety. And Mary Tracy 
made her think of things that she knew were true, had 
read in books and papers, seen on the stage, that hap¬ 
pened between men and women. She watched Mrs. Tracy 
raise her eyes to Michael, caught his answering glance, 
mocking, beseeching, scornful, wholly pitiful. Veronika 
knew that mockery and scorn. It was the mask for the 
things that hurt—like the crippled back of Aloysius, like 
—this. 

Lily, in perpetual motion, was doing an intricate dance 
with a thin young officer, who looked amazingly wooden 
as he went forward, back, and bent his knees a little, 


60 A Handmaid of the Lord 

working out some pattern. Lily wove around him like 
gold leaf on wood. 

It was time to dance again with Stewart. 

“Shall we dance, Ronny?” 

It was the first time he had called her Ronny. 

“Do you think we should?” 

“Not in the least. What would you like?” 

“A breath of air,” she said, “because it’s spring. Then 
possibly two large plates of salad.” 

He took her program and his out of his pocket and 
looking at them tore the bits of pasteboard across. 

“Let’s play by ourselves.” 

Outside they strolled down the cement walk which 
fronted the stupid red brick officers’ houses. They dif¬ 
fered, as did the officers, only in formal ranking, in size. 
Otherwise they were all alike. On Colonel Tracy’s house 
a porch light burned and some early moths buzzed around 
it. Below in the barracks some one was playing a banjo 
badly and an evidently ecstatic quartet was singing to it 
—cheap love songs. They strolled slowly, listening. 

“I’m twenty to-day.” 

“Last time I asked I was told you were nineteen. I’m 
glad you’re twenty.” 

“Why?” It was Veronika’s first coquettish remark. 
She knew why. She knew why he had torn up those 
programs and why it was stirring to walk beside him. 

“Because I’m not a cradle snatcher,” he answered 
shortly. “And because I’m thirty. Which is quite enough 
difference.” 

She wanted to ask “difference for what,” but re¬ 
frained. Because it was the only remark that occurred 
to her she said nothing at all. They walked on and, 
half expectant, half trembling, she waited for him to 


61 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

go on. Having some one in love with you was not the 
easy, gracious business she had imagined. It was very 
fragmentary and very lumpy. 

Outside where the entrance to the post began under 
the little stone bridge they saw a soldier come whistling. 
Beyond him a girl went off into the darkness. Not a girl 
—the white skirt of a girl, the symbol of a girl. Veronika 
felt very sad and unfamiliar and uninformed. She 
sighed as they regained the walk up to the dance hall. 

And Stewart asked—“Are you cold?” Her cape was 
floating out around her, for she liked the wind on her 
neck. He stopped and, standing in front of her, pulled 
it close. 

“Silly child,” he said, and fumbled for a hook. There 
was no hook and as he bent to look for one he pressed 
his lips to her bare chest just where her dress fell from it. 
Everything in Veronika sunk, then rose and scrambled. 
She held her hand to the place as if she had been burned. 
They were in the gas light. Now she was eating chicken 
salad. She was conscious of wanting to be unable to 
eat and conscious of wanting that salad. Stewart hov¬ 
ered. Sometimes, as they were eating, his knee touched 
hers, and once his hand was on her shoulder. Each time 
she jumped. 

People came and spoke to her, asked her about college, 
asked her if she knew this or that girl. She tried to 
force interest in what they said and knew she was failing. 
Her eyes sought for Michael. 

“Want to go?” asked Stewart. 

She did, and asked him to find Michael. He gave a 
comprehensive glance over the room and left it. 

Veronika felt quite alone, not at all as she thought 
she should feel when twenty and with Stewart Royden 


62 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


in love with her. The officers fox-trotted by her. Sad¬ 
ness still hovered over her. She had tried to have an 
unblemished day, and she was sad because so many things 
were beyond her reach and unexplained and because she 
could not be as Lily, gay and young and floating by as 
youth should float. Her first kiss was a hot spot on her 
chest. Her first intimation of love had been the crossness 
of a man. And Michael had disappeared somewhere with 
Mary Tracy. 

From the suavity of Stewart, as he returned, she knew 
that something was wrong. His manner was built up 
to conceal something, but she had played that game her¬ 
self and knew it well. 

“We’re to go home without Michael?” she asked. 

“He’ll be along later, he says.” 

What was it ? Lily’s presence barred everything, Stew¬ 
art’s possible love-making as well as explanations. She 
was afraid of explanations and Lily was like the tunes 
running in her golden head, blithe and repetitive and 
reminiscent. 

Veronika would not let the pressure of Stewart’s hand 
be significant. There was something about Michael and 
Mary Tracy—something she should worry about. Stew¬ 
art was too protective. 

She lay awake until she heard the turn of Michael’s 
latchkey, then put on a bathrobe and went down to 
meet him. But when she saw Michael she knew that 
was a mistake. He was flushed and his eyes were bright 
and not in the least tired. He looked like a man just 
emerged from a successful fight. 

“Well, Veronika,” he asked, “what’s wrong?” 

When he called her Veronika he was trying to get .rid 
of her. She did not know how to begin. 


63 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

“I thought maybe something had happened to you.” 

‘‘Stewart said he’d take you home. I was—detained.” 
His words were sharp and determined to tell her nothing. 
Still she stood looking at him, loath to go. 

“Did you have a good time?” she asked. 

She was annoying him. He did not want her inter¬ 
ruption to whatever line of thought he was engaged in. 

“Did you?” he asked. “You weren’t dancing very 
well.” 

And though she had known and admitted it still it hurt 
her. She discovered the vein in herself that was identi¬ 
cal with his. 

“At least,” she flared, “if any one made love to me 
it was some one who had a right to do it.” 

“Why, you little wretch,” said Michael under his 
breath, then laughed an ugly, solitary laugh. “Like all 
the rest of them, aren’t you? They scuttled off to-night 
like rats when they got wind of the news.” 

“What news?” 

Michael lit a cigarette and regarded her coldly. 

“Mrs. Tracy is to be divorced by her husband and 
I shall marry her.” 

3 

They all knew. Grandfather Pearse denouncing, not 
the divorce and its cause, oddly enough, but the threat 
of Michael’s subsequent marriage to a divorced woman; 
Aunt Kate shocked, but living in whispered colloquies 
with other aunts which seemed engrossing; Lily, packed 
back to the convent quickly as if for purification, be¬ 
fore the newspapers began to carry their stories. Only 
four days since the Post dance which had ended with 
the ugly incident Veronika had not seen and which the 


64 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


newspapers retailed so juicily. The break had come at 
the Colonel’s house. Veronika remembered how peace¬ 
ful the house had seemed that night with the moths 
buzzing around the porch light. The violence didn’t mat¬ 
ter after all. Neither the violence nor the things it stood 
for, still so nebulous in Veronika’s mind. What she 
couldn’t bear were the letters. It seemed incredible that 
the lean, brown, suavely-civil Colonel could have given 
these letters to the newspapers. Yet there they had been, 
the three of them, in the morning papers for people to 
read and jeer over. Those three letters so unlike Michael 
that you wouldn’t have believed he had written them 
at all unless you had known all along that underneath 
the mockery and debonair carriage just such softness 
lurked. Three letters—two years old—why had Colonel 
Tracy waited so long? What had happened in the mean¬ 
time? 

In the early evening Veronika walked down the street. 
She had to get away from the house; from the questions 
of Michael’s mother, from the satires of Aloysius, from 
the occasional sight of Michael’s own black face as he 
came home late. 

On a corner the newsboy was crying his papers. The 
evening papers would have the letters too. She saw a 
man stop and buy one and roll it up carelessly, stuff it 
into his pocket with the Pearse-Tracy letters to be di¬ 
gested later— He would sit beside his living room 
lamp and read Michael’s letters—written two years ago 
to Mary Tracy in New Orleans. 

“Dear Heart: 

“I write so badly—I have never learned to be 
articulate and yet if I do not try I shall starve 


65 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

while you are gone. Letters are madness, but 
not to write them worse madness. For when I 
write it seems as if again I can sound the 
depths of your sweetness . . . now I know the 
reality of all the absurdities in the world and all 
the delights—” 

This morning Michael had said to Aloysius: 

“I see they’ve printed all that putrid rot. Can you 
imagine how any one can be such a damned fool as to 
write to a woman anyhow?” 

Veronika confronted the newsboy. 

“I want all your papers.” 

“The whole bunch ?” 

Even at only three cents apiece it mounted up to all 
the change in her purse. She rolled the heavy bundle 
up and held it under her arm till she reached the 
bridge. Then she dropped them over the rail and 
watched them float and tumble and toss in the strong 
spring current. 

4 

It was dark when she reached Michael’s house again, 
the house that seemed to be strange now that the gayety 
had dropped out of her relationship with Michael, now 
that she knew he was going to marry Mary Tracy. Out¬ 
side two poplars trembled, rustling like the whispering 
tongues of gossiping women. She stood for a minute 
in the narrow hallway and looked at the letters. There 
was one from Valhalla. She hoped very much it had 
a check inside it. Lily wanted money and there was 
her own term tuition due when she got back. She read 


66 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


the letter twice and then went into the parlor, where 
Aunt Kate sat in conclave with Michael’s mother. 
Aloysius, sitting under his strong reading lamp, held 
a book. 

They were all casual for a moment. Then— 

“Did you hear from your father, Veronika?” asked 
Aunt Kate. 

“Yes.” 

“I had a letter from Francis too. It’s too bad, just 
when things seemed to be going a little better with him. 
Just what does he mean by low-grade ore?” 

“There’s no money in it. His holdings are too small,” 
explained Veronika. 

“I don’t know what to do,” said Aunt Kate sadly. 

Mrs. Pearse rocked. “We must ask Michael.” 

Veronika stiffened. “No,” she answered quickly. 
“You mustn’t bother Michael with this. Positively not. 
Father wrote me too that he really thought she (the old 
italics of her childhood returned) should not be alone. 
We must go home. At once.” 

She caught Aloysius’s eyes upon her. 

“Well,” said Aunt Kate, “we all want to do what’s 
best, dear. There’s nothing between you and Stewart 
Royden ?” 

“Nothing.” 

“If I had the money I’d insist on your finishing this 
year. But you know how it is. I’ve had hardly any 
dividends—this winter. I do think though that Lily 
should stay because you see she has only one more year. 
And she’s frail, Ronny. Don’t you think yourself she 
ought to stay? Her grandfather would gladly pay the 
convent tuition—” 

Veronika’s hand passed over her forehead in an oddly 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


67 


mature gesture. It was all clear and yet it had to be 
tangled to be kindly. If Stewart Royden was engaged 
to her then they would have made her stay, money or 
no money. Or if she had been in a convent. Or if she 
had been Lily. But there were only Michael and 
Aloysius—one crippled and helpless—the other preoccu¬ 
pied—who could have helped her. 

She smiled at Aloysius. 

“I really have to go home anyway,” she said. ‘Til 
write the people at college—or run over for a few days 
and pack the rest of my things. You’re right about 
Lily. She’d better stay just where she is. I fancy father 
can take care of her bills all right, Aunt Kate.” 

As they went to supper, Aloysius detained her for a 
moment. 

“You hold on to yourself till Michael gets back.” 

“Where’s he gone?” 

“He went to Albany this afternoon to dodge this racket 
in the papers for a few weeks. Had to.” 

“I see,” said Veronika slowly. “Then I guess I won’t 
see him again, will I?” 


CHAPTER VI 


i 

TN the confessional the wooden slide behind the little 
*■* grating slid back. Veronika was alone before the 
priest in the darkness, in a still, imminent darkness. She 
could hear the low words of blessing and feel the cold¬ 
ness of her own clasped hands. Out of her mind sped 
the things that she had arranged there so neatly, the 
order of her offenses, the sins she must not forget, the 
controversial questions that she meant to raise in de¬ 
fense. 

“How long since your last confession ?” came the kind, 
easy voice. 

It was always long since Veronika's last confession. 

She stumbled along, guided by his soft questioning. 

“I am not sure that I believe—I doubt everything, ques¬ 
tion everything." 

“That you have come here shows that you do be¬ 
lieve, my child. We must all pray for faith. . . . Make 
a good act of contrition." She was absolved. The 
grating slid again, the barrier between her and the ex¬ 
planation she was always seeking. She turned and lifted 
the curtain and as she did so a black-coated Irish woman, 
muttering rapid Hail Marys, pushed past her to take her 
place. What would she confess, Veronika wondered? 
She could have no doubts, no troublesome affairs of love. 
For the rest—it is only the young who sin, thought 
Veronika suddenly. 


68 


A Handmaid of the Lord 69 

She flung herself into a pew and bent her head close 
on her arms to shut out sights, sounds, everything except 
the closeness of absolution. She was absolved. She 
must accept it. But her thoughts searched out those sins 
she had forgotten in those minutes of excitement. She 
had omitted the one she had keyed herself up to tell, the 
one she hated to admit to herself. She had hunted for 
some way of evading it, but the law stood out—“im¬ 
modesty in thought.” Those dreams she cherished after 
waking, with their strange seductive images belonged 
in her confession. She had forgotten to tell of them. 
Forgotten or concealed. She searched her mind relent¬ 
lessly. Forgotten. The sin was clear then in the sight 
of God and she had been spared the telling. 

All around her people filed in and out of the confes¬ 
sionals, most of them accustomedly, formally, with an 
air of habit. Here and there knelt some one in sorrow 
or contemplation, but for the most part the penitents 
knew the path to grace and trod it calmly. In the church 
with its lights flickering on the dim altars and the out¬ 
lines of the saints wavering in their niches and hidden 
priests patiently and dispassionately unloading sheaves 
of human frailty, Veronika was out of place. Relief 
came to her too slowly. 

Her thoughts began blurring. Clouding the sharp 
actuality of self-perception that she called conscience was 
the delicate haze of people and events. She raised her 
head. The quivering skeleton feather in the hat of a 
woman ahead of her held her eye, someone’s forgotten 
glove lying in the pew beside her. It was a good glove. 
The owner would want it. Should she give it to the 
sexton? She thought with sympathy of the person who 
had lost it, and then suddenly conscious that her mind 


70 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


was no longer on her offenses, pulled it back again. Stiff 
with fatigue, for she had knelt long before she went into 
the confessional, she rose at last and went out through 
the church door. The abnegation in her manner melted 
into peace in the cool evening breeze. She lifted her 
chin and almost unconsciously her fingers directed the 
soft sweep of hair at the side of her hat. 

That was for the man who might appear, the man 
lurking always now in the chances of Veronika’s day. 
He was the unsolved question that made life stimulating 
and bracing. As she went toward her father’s house, 
down the half-dark streets where houses bordered the 
sidewalk closely, though she still held the peace of her 
conscience close to her, all the delight of things that had 
not happened was stirring in her. She sought the prin¬ 
cipal street deliberately, though she could have flagged 
her street car on a side crossing. The main street had 
white way lights, round electric globes set proudly at 
intervals and the plate glass of the shop windows shone 
and glittered. Strips of mirror in the windows showed 
Veronika to herself as she walked by them, young, 
smooth-haired under the slanting hat, but charming most 
because of that untried suppleness of her body which 
showed so clearly that she had not yet undergone any 
of woman’s physical exhaustions. 

She was waiting on the corner for a street car when 
Saul spoke to her. 

“School keep late to-night?” he said at her elbow. 

She turned quickly to face the tall, lean, young man 
with smiling eyes. 

“Not school. I’ve been to church.” 

“You should have taken me.” 

“Didn’t you have something to do?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 71 

“Not much. Waiting for some information before 
I can go on much farther.” 

They paused. Little stops in their conversation were 
always happening like this. They embarrassed Veron¬ 
ika. She wanted this tall young architect, Saul Griffin, 
to keep his distance for a while yet. The unspoken pos¬ 
sibilities of the “yet” were enchanting, when it was clear 
he could not keep away from her. 

“I have to hurry home. I’ll be late for dinner.” 

“Let me ride with you.” 

That was all right, but she wanted him to leave her 
at the street corner. She was not too sure of the state 
of things at home. Besides she did not want to get mud¬ 
dled emotionally to-night. She wanted to hold fast to 
the thought of the confession, a clean garment wrapped 
around a clean soul. 

“Not to-night.” 

“But it’s desolate. Let me come up for a little while 
after dinner then. If you knew what I’ll be condemned 
to if you don’t.” 

“I must go back to school. There’s a dance there. 
Neighborhood boys and girls. I have to supervise.” 

“Let me come with you.” 

She shook her head. “They don’t take me seriously 
with a man hanging around.” 

He laughed, his almost too boyish laugh. 

“Well, if I don’t hang around, may I call for you?” 

“That’s different again. If you like.” 


2 


The house was dark when she reached it. No light 
warning or welcoming anywhere. She found her latch- 


72 A Handmaid of the Lord 

key and pushed her way into the hallway, chilled in the 
darkness. In the living room there were the remains of 
last night’s fire in the fireplace, three or four burnt logs. 
It was a stale-looking scene, as was the dining-room, 
where the breakfast cloth still lay on the table and the 
kitchen, where a pile of soiled dishes stood on the drying 
board covered with a dish towel. Veronika regarded it, 
a lump of self-pity in her throat. Here she was tired 
after a long day in the High School and she must play 
domestic servant as well as every other part, with no 
sympathizing audience, with no one who cared how hard 
everything was. 

Grimly she lit the gas under the gas heater for hot 
water and went to take off her hat and coat and get to 
work. Upstairs the same disorder was apparent. The 
sheets streamed over the foot boards of the beds. Her 
mother had gone off somewhere without a thought of 
housework. Veronika flung a smock over her dress and 
pulled the sheets up fiercely on the bed in her room. It 
was while she was doing it that she noted the letters 
which had been placed on her desk, one from Lily, now 
studying singing in New York, one from Georgia Col- 
lingwood, who had been her best friend at college and 
now seemed as remote after a year as if she had been 
known in a previous incarnation, and one from Stewart 
Royden. How he did hang on, she thought idly. She 
read the other letters first, but they had no news of 
interest. Then Stewart’s, which brought a frown to her 
forehead. She didn’t want him to come West. She 
didn’t want him to see Valhalla. Why did he insist? 
He only pretended it was business. She tried to get a 
clear picture of Stewart as he had seemed in that last 
interview which they had had in Westover when she 


A Handmaid of the Lord 73 

had hurled doubts at him until even his desire had 
wavered. Yes, it was queer that he hung on! 

The housework immersed her. Beds, dishes, a light 
turned on here and there, a few manipulations of the 
carpet sweeper over the rugs, but it was so futile. There 
were times when she could avoid that thought of futility 
and be comfortable just because things were done, but 
to-night nothing helped. The edges of the rugs curled 
up to mock at her, a torn piece of wall paper in the 
dining-room flapped. In the ice box she found pork 
chops and put them in a skillet, heating another for 
the pile of cold potatoes she meant to fry. The ugliness 
of the meal depressed her more and more. She found 
the lettuce limp and ugly and flung it into the sink 
drainer. 

There had been few visible changes in the house since 
Veronika and Lily were children. The buffet mirror 
reflected the Pearse family as they sat at the dinner an 
hour later. Dr. Pearse, thin-haired, fat-paunched, stooped 
at the shoulders, eating hurriedly and nervously and 
silently. Opposite him sat his wife pouring herself 
cups of tea, one after another, and arguing about Lily, 
arguing with herself because her husband would not 
join in contention. Between them was Veronika eating 
silently like her father, but ashamed of the abnormality 
of her silence. She did not dare to speak. She knew 
the kindling that counter remarks might make, the sud¬ 
den blaze of conflagration and anger. To-night above 
all things she desired peace and to get to communion 
in the morning with her soul still clean. 

She asked her father if he had heard from Tom. 
Yes, he said, Tom was coming up from the university 


74 A Handmaid of the Lord 

to-morrow to spend the day, driving up with some friend 
of his. 

“I should think he'd know better,” said Veronika 
under her breath. 

That she knew accounted for her mother’s compara¬ 
tive silence to-night. She was secretly pleased because 
Tom was coming. But Veronika had a vision of a long 
day of meal getting, of expecting quarrels, dodging them, 
encountering them. 

She pushed back her chair and spoke to her mother. 

“I have to hurry and get back to school. There’s a 
dance there that I am supervising. You’d better do these 
dishes before Tom comes.” 

Not much, young lady, I’m not so young as you are! 
Let your father get a good girl in here to do them.” 

Veronika left the dining-room just as the voices of 
altercation began. She knew every inflection from the 
indignant to the whining and hated them all. Upstairs 
she slipped from her suit and blouse into a dress of 
dull blue satin, plainly made. The one satisfaction of 
all this hideous year was that she was earning enough 
money to buy clothes and indulge an occasional fancy. 
It made up just a little for the long, empty days in the 
classroom, trying to interest elaborately and absurdly 
dressed girls and shuffling boys in nineteenth-century 
prose, for the nervous worry and discomfort of her home, 
for the ache that came sometimes for fine, free spring 
days on the college campus, for gay conversations with 
Michael in Westover. At first she had dreamed of 
changes, or trying to be tolerant with her mother and 
making life happier for her father, but those dreams 
faded. Even when she had a chance with her father 
she couldn’t find ground on which they could meet. He 


A Handmaid of the Lord 75 

was reactionary, distrustful. Every new development 
in medicine was fake. Every change in politics a sign 
that the country was going to the devil. It was petty pes¬ 
simism, built of complaints and personal dissatisfactions 
and failures. Veronika suspected sometimes that he en¬ 
joyed his sense of having been personally injured by the 
world, and then that feeling was loyally swept away by her 
realization that he had truly been badly treated and had 
little to show for years of effort. As she went out 
of the door she could hear the controversy in the dining¬ 
room rising higher and higher. She shut the door tightly 
and hurried. Ever since she had been very young she 
had always hurried away from the house. Too often 
noise penetrated the walls. 

On the corner and two blocks away was the Lewis 
house, huge and square and made of yellow brick. From 
early admiration Veronika had come to know how ugly 
it was and to realize that Elbe Lewis was a fool and 
never would be anything else. But that made the irre¬ 
pressible clutch of something like envy all the harder 
as she looked at the big cars at the curb outside the 
house, the lights in the windows of the dining-room and 
the living-room. People from Duluth were there prob¬ 
ably, or from St. Paul, clever men interested in the 
Coldbreath mine, and Elbe was regaling them with talks 
of her travels in Europe. Elbe, scuttling through Eu¬ 
rope, might be as absurd as possible, but after all it was 
continental travel. Elbe’s home was full of light and 
luxury and order, not inhabited by people who tore at 
each other’s souls all the time. 

Sometimes the wet sidewalks meant romantic isola¬ 
tion. But to-night they made Veronika conscious of 
loneliness. 


76 A Handmaid of the Lord 

The moon had risen and from one of the little hills 
she could see in the distance the open pit mine which 
lay closest to the city, a great rough excavation like an 
eternally unhealed sore. Little lights skipped around in 
the hole, tail lights of cars on the narrow tracks which 
skirted its ledges, bent on some night errand. Beyond 
the dim window lights of the houses in the location 
near the mine spotted the darkness. Veronika could see 
for miles from her little eminence. She leaned her el¬ 
bows on the wooden fence that protected the sidewalk 
and rested for a moment. She always wondered at what 
she saw. Incomplete, rough, almost inexhaustibly rich 
and yet yielding only poverty on the outskirts, it was 
endless food for reverie. Nature and God and muddle- 
headed men were all before her in their ill-managed part¬ 
nership. 

The school waited for her. Already she could see the 
lights blazing there and went on. The school was un¬ 
believable. Flanked in the blocks on either side by 
small, peaked, frame houses, fronted by them, it rose, 
seemingly from a field, immense in beauty, perfect in 
design, its lawns and playgrounds parked with skill 
and then meeting in absurd and anti-climax, vacant lots 
where tin cans rolled at the feet of billboards. That 
was Valhalla. Its High School, three-million-dollar 
structure, faced by ill-painted board houses, was only one 
of the paradoxes which the revenue of the mine and 
the greed of tax administrators were always committing. 

The immense and beautiful school entrance dwarfed 
Veronika, and she was no more important in the shadows 
of its great columns than the giggling boys and girls who 
commenced to file in. Inside one forgot Valhalla. That 
was the trick of the High School. In the middle of the 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


77 


entrance hall was a cast of Joan of Arc, the dreaming 
Joan, looking down at the boys and girls who filed past 
her without a glance, each boy clinging to his girl's arm 
in gesture of possessorship. In the upper hall, where 
they danced, mural paintings by a great artist topped 
the gray cedar panels. Veronika hung her coat and hat 
in the teachers' cloakroom and went down to take up 
her work of chaperonage. The task, in its distant re¬ 
lationship to spying, always oppressed her a little and 
she tried to minimize some of its phases. It flattered 
her that the students liked to have her at the dances and 
she too liked to be there and hear the music play accom¬ 
paniments to her imaginings. 

Up and down the hall the boys and girls waved, and 
in a comfortable wicker chair Veronika presided, smiling 
at some of her favorites now and then. Her mind stole 
off to Stewart Royden and to Saul, who would possibly 
soon be here. Miss Robinson, correcting papers in her 
own classroom and technically sharing chaperonage, ap¬ 
proached to talk things over. 

“Where's Elmer More to-night?" she asked. “He and 
Hazel Hurst never miss anything." 

Veronika looked around. 

“I saw him somewhere." 

When Miss Robinson left her, her thought went back 
to Elmer and Hazel. Of course she had seen them. 
She remembered Hazel's black taffeta dance frock of a 
demureness that was ironic when one considered Hazel’s 
perpetual flirtations. She was wild—every one knew 
that. At seventeen she was accomplished in an art that 
Veronika had not yet mastered. 

They were not on the floor. Veronika looked down¬ 
stairs in the prescribed cuddling corners. Then she did 


78 A Handmaid of the Lord 

a thing she hated. She looked for Hazel’s coat. It was 
in the cloakroom and the night was chill now. She 
never would have gone out without it. Miss Pearse, 
instructor of English, began to feel very responsible, 
while within her Veronika shrank from her task of hunt¬ 
ing the boy and girl. She wanted to tramp upstairs 
to the classroom and knew she should go softly. After 
all it was her business to surprise them in whatever 
they might be up to. But how could she be sure—how 
could she possibly bear the revelation of it, them, if she 
should chance on it! 

She went softly up the stairs and stood listening. 
Dark classrooms everywhere, but as she stood listening 
she caught the faintest sound of a girl’s giggle from 
behind a closed door. Veronika’s hand was on the knob. 
Then in self-protection, not in protection of the children 
within—she coughed, stamped a little and did not open 
the door for the fragment of a moment. When, after 
the slightest pause, she was within and with a quick 
finger had turned on the lights the boy and girl were 
revealed by the window standing apart from each other 
as if frightened. In the boy’s face was a half-fearful 
insolence, but Hazel’s cheeks had two red spots and her 
eyes were curiously dull. 

“Of course,” said Veronika, heavily, “you have no 
business up here. Students are never allowed to come 
upstairs and you both know it. I am amazed. You may 
go home, Elmer. Home, not hanging around the build¬ 
ing, is what I mean. Hazel, you stay and go home with 
Miss Robinson. I’ll see you both to-morrow.” 

The boy slunk out, scraping his feet. He was nearly 
as tall as Veronika and as he passed her she held herself 


79 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

stiffly lest he should detect her trembling. Some courage 
helped her to watch him out of the building and to rele¬ 
gate the girl to a corner in Miss Robinson’s room. Miss 
Robinson’s eyebrows went up, eagerly it seemed to 
Veronika, in anticipation of detection of some salacious¬ 
ness. She followed Veronika into the hall. 

“What were they up to?” 

“Petting,” answered Veronika briefly. “I sent Elmer 
home.” 

Her head was light with the excitement. She talked 
with some of the students, tried to control her galloping 
thought. Pictures—imaginations—with horror she re¬ 
membered that only a few hours ago she had been in 
the confessional, purifying her mind. She must keep it 
undefiled until the communion. She tried to recall the 
lesson for Monday for her English class. Walter Pater 
on style. That didn’t help. Then she would pray. She 
tried to say the penitential psalms. Heal me, for my 
bones are troubled. What had the one who sang that 
been really thinking of? Why were his bones troubled? 
The psalms set themselves ridiculously to dance music— 
and the boys and girls, passing her chair, hummed “pos¬ 
itively, Mr. Gallagher—absolutely, Mr. Shean.” 

Miss Robinson went home rather early with her de¬ 
linquent charge. Veronika was left to dismiss the stu¬ 
dents and see that the building was in order. Saul came 
as the last couple departed and she welcomed him now. 
He was so fine and tall and simple, so handsome in his 
boyish way, which lacked something of being a man’s 
manner. 

“Don’t turn off the lights just yet,” he begged. “Pve 
simply got to take another look around that assembly 


80 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


room. There’s something about the dome in the roof 
I want to make sure of. They were discussing it at the 
meeting to-night.” 

“For the new building ?” 

“Yes—we’ve just about landed the contract.” 

“So you’ll be around here all the time?” 

“If I get rich I may buy a lot and build me a house,” 
he teased. 

His coming to Valhalla had been accidental, the result 
of the continual effort on the part of the school board 
to have unsurpassed schools. The big new grade school 
building, near the largest mine, was being bid for by 
various architects and Saul was sent from Chicago by 
his firm to look the ground over. Then the thing had 
been tied up with local political upheavals, but Saul had 
hung on, not too impatient after he met Veronika, not 
impatient anyway, as pleased apparently with Valhalla 
as he would have been with Chicago. 

Veronika dismissed the janitor. 

“Just leave the light in the downstairs hall and put the 
latch on so that the outer door will lock when we go 
out. Mr. Griffin wants to take a look at the assembly 
hall.” 

The janitor went out. They could hear the click of 
the door as he closed it, and they climbed to the assembly 
room, Veronika suddenly conscious that she was alone 
with Saul in the building. 

He prowled about the assembly making estimates, ex¬ 
plaining the possible improvements, squinting at the dome 
in the ceiling. 

“Come along,” said Veronika, “you’ve admired it long 
enough and are sufficiently sure you can do better.” 

“I’d like to prove it to you, though.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 81 

“Oh, I’m a hopeless skeptic. You can’t prove any¬ 
thing to me.” 

“Couldn’t I?” He turned out the light and let her 
precede him into the hall only dimly lit by the reflection 
from clusters below. And he too seemed aware now 
of their isolation and caught her arm, pulling her close 
to him, so that they walked together slowly. She knew 
that as a prelude to the moment when he would turn 
her around and hold her so tightly that every quiver 
of his body would try to pass through hers. Each 
time she tried to give herself up to that embrace. She 
liked being embraced and knew that she still missed 
something of its potency, something that he was getting 
and she was not. Saul’s youth and grace, the simplicity 
with which his feeling overwhelmed him until he would 
let her go with a choking laugh and catch her close to 
him again, all were true and fine. 

From below a dim suffusing light traveled up the 
stairs, but failed in strength before it reached the hall¬ 
way, so vast in gloom. The silence was intense, broken 
only by the half-heard ticking of a clock behind the door 
in the nearest schoolroom. All else was velvety darkness 
in which the two figures were immersed—life isolated in 
space and conscious of its power. 

“I like it here,” said Saul, releasing her. “I like its 
emptiness and space and the fine faint smell of oil. Let’s 
find a place to sit down and a window to look at the 
moon and imagine that we are anywhere—” 

He left her and opened a classroom door, looking for 
windows and a glimpse of the moon. 

“Here it is,” he cried, and went back to bring her 
to the window which seemed to open on the moonlight. 
But Veronika shuddered. He had chosen the room 


82 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

where she had found the boy and girl. Faint hostility 
to flesh, his or hers—any one’s—rose in her. 

“Come—before the night watchman thinks we’re school 
robbers!” 

“Why will you never be alone with me?” he begged 
her. 

“I am with you.” 

“And hurrying away with all your might. Why?” 

She sat down on the top step of the staircase. 

“I don’t know why.” 

“I don’t please you. I don’t know much about pleas¬ 
ing women. But I’ve always thought that would be the 
one thing I could bring to the woman I married—that 
I don’t know.” 

It touched her. She let him sit down beside her and 
felt again the warmth of his shoulder. 

“This,” he told her, “is new. This being close to you 
and not being able to be close enough—the shiver of 
delight that is almost fear when you touch me. It’s all 
new. I never have felt that way before,” and, more 
softly, “I never shall again.” 

“That’s tempting fate.” 

“Don’t mock. It’s because, whatever happened, it never 
could be all new again. I would remember that this was 
what I felt with Veronika. Now there is no memory. 
We must explore everything—together—won’t we, 
Veronika?” 

Veronika did not argue. She let herself sink into the 
spell as far as she could, the spell of his arms and his 
voice and his hard, long kisses. All the time she knew 
she was unreleased and wondered why. Her imagina¬ 
tion slumbered. No delight with him yet became delight, 
despite the idyll that he made his love, and the tenderness 


83 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

of his approach. She sat beside him and waited for the 
point to come at which he did sometimes intoxicate her 
with the fervor of his love and she could respond to him. 
Now she was too cool—too relaxed. 

“Say you love me, dearest.” 

She thought lazily that at the moment thousands of 
men were saying such words to thousands of women, 
and for thousands of years men had said them nightly 
to women. It was her turn now and she did not know 
the answer, so for reply she placed her cheek lightly on 
his hand. 

“I don’t know what love is,” she said at last, “I don’t 
know much about anything and least about that.” 

“You will know,” he said, and his prophecy struck into 
her as nothing else he had said. She trembled to it, 
again with her delight in things unknown, and the surety 
of the swift approach of experience. 

“I’ll teach you, my darling.” But from that she 
shrank away a little. Not yet had she chosen her teacher. 

There is no more delicious expenditure of time than 
that which passes in lovers’ anticipations, even when one 
is sure and the other unsure. Minutes and half hours 
slipped by in long intense caresses, in murmurings of 
controversy, of agreement. Saul told her about himself 
as they sat on the steps, filling in the outlines of a life 
which she had known vaguely. His mother had been a 
saleswoman, a traveling saleswoman, deserted by his 
father and she had taken her child with her as she made 
her trips through the country. He had grown up in the 
atmosphere of country hotels, left when he was a small 
child in the care of slovenly chambermaids and later al¬ 
lowed to roam more or less by himself about the hotel 
parlors and little lobbies where he picked up information 


84 A Handmaid of the Lord 

about everything and learned to sift the things that were 
desirable from those that were not. His pale, black-clad, 
tired and disillusioned mother, eternally straightening 
and pressing samples of women's underwear had helped 
him a little. But for the most part his instincts had been 
sprung from the intense early disgust with which he had 
learned of and seen viciousness and depravity, nausea 
which he had never conquered and which had choked 
curiosities before they had a chance to develop. There 
had come ambition and desire to do something to help 
his pale, wearying mother—the inevitable correspondence 
course, the desultory study of “how to be an architect"— 
his mother's death and his apprenticeship to the firm 
where he still was connected. All along the course of his 
life had been punctuated with friendships and experi¬ 
ences resultant from them. He had gone West on a 
walking tour one summer and been a harvest hand in 
Montana—he had spent a summer on Long Island on the 
estate of a wealthy man as guest of the son of the house 
whom he had met somewhere. The events of his life 
were ill-assorted, large and small beads strung on his per¬ 
sonality, unrelated to each other. There was no perfected 
plan. His living was unified only by himself. 

Veronika drifted as he talked. She sat with her chin 
in her hand looking into the faint gloom conscious of 
what he said and indifferent to it. The present held in¬ 
terest enough to fade the past. When he tipped back 
her face to kiss it, her eyes were remote. 

Every moment passing by thickened the cloud which 
lay between them and the things of every day, left them 
more miraculously alone in the building. 

“It is a temple of love," said Saul. 

Veronika rose slowly, breaking some spell reluctantly, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 85 

but he pulled her back. She felt the fragile fastening of 
her dress snap open and his hand searching tenderly the 
hollows of her neck and breast. Panic seized her, again 
that disgust of flesh, companioned by a strange delight. 
She struggled free and went swiftly down the stairs to 
the door. He followed, his impulse frightened away and 
she heard him snap off the light behind her and close the 
door. They were outside and a thousand suddenly awak¬ 
ened cautions rose in Veronika. How long had they 
been there? 

The clock on the tower struck a single note and she 
glanced up at it apprehensively. It was one o’clock. 

It seemed to her as if the shades of the little darkened 
windows opposite were watching her as she came down 
the broad steps with Saul. She hated the apprehension 
of something indefinite that rose in her, but it mingled 
with the memory of the boy and girl whom she had 
caught in an embrace—or could have caught— 

Now Saul would possess himself of her arm. And she 
felt closer, more animate than she had felt inside the 
building. They walked slowly along the silent streets 
until they were about before the clipped barberry hedge 
that marked the Pearse house. Upstairs there was no 
light, but she did not dare let him come nearer for fear 
her mother would be awakened into comment. 

‘To-morrow ?” he asked. 

To-morrow rose before her, a long day begun with the 
communion and confused with the coming of her 
brother. 

“Not to-morrow—I have to go to early church—” 

“Let me go with you.” 

She almost cried out refusal. 

“I must be alone—I can’t think if I’m not—think 


86 A Handmaid of the Lord 

straight of God—and (it probably seems strange to you), 
but you can’t go to communion unless your mind and 
soul are clean. Even now I wonder if after to-night—I 
should go?” 

“Why?” 

“Is it a sin—to love?” 

“Sin! It’s the holiest thing that has ever happened to 
me. Take it to God, my darling—” 

And still she felt that in the enclosure of his arms, un¬ 
der his hot breath, with his fervent mouth pressed on 
hers, was not the preparation for things of the spirit. 
But she said nothing more, for over her, too, faint excite¬ 
ment crept now, and in the unlit street they stood, heart 
to heart. 

When he had left her she opened the front door quietly 
and turned on the hall light. In the mirror by the stair¬ 
way she could see her cheeks glowing beautiful beyond 
denial with the beauty that grew under her lover’s touch. 
She went softly up the front stairs, but her mother heard 
her. The restless springs of her bed creaked, and she 
came out to face Veronika, an alarm clock in her hand. 

“Where have you been until two o’clock?” she de¬ 
manded. 

Veronika would have pushed past her, but her mother 
barred the way and the passage was narrow. 

“You’ll lose your name, my lady—out with that skinny 
young fellow this hour of the morning! How do you 
know how many wives he has here and there. Men! 
That’s all they’re good for—to ruin young girls—that’s 
all they want—they’re a nasty lot—keep away from 
them!” 

Her daughter looked at her wildly. The incoherent 
woman standing there like a witch, like an ugly thought, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


87 


with thin black hair around her bitter face and perhaps 
some fear, some thought of warning prompting her, 
seemed like a distortion of Veronika’s own terrors. 

“Your father never’ll do anything for you—and you’ll 
end in the gutter if you run around like this—never trust 
a man—keeping you out this late and having all the 
neighbors talking.” 

“Talking! Haven’t they been talking about us for 
years!” 

“That’s because your father’s a bad man—that’s what 
they say.” She padded down the hall in her bare feet to 
the door of Dr. Pearse’s little room rattling the knob. 

“Have you any control over your daughter?” she 
shouted. 

Veronika locked her door. She had made a battle for 
that lock, telling her mother that the first time it was 
disturbed she would walk out of the house and never come 
back. It had not been tampered with—yet. 

She was tired now. When she had come into the house 
she had been exalted. That was pricked, and in its place 
was a stupid confusion of worries and doubts, preyed 
upon mercilessly by physical exhaustion. Was she sin¬ 
ful? Was anything sin? Ought she go to communion in 
the morning? 

She wanted to go more than anything else. She was 
willing to drop Saul from her mind to have the surety 
the communion would give her—the sense of reconcilia¬ 
tion, of moral order. There was no sin in a man’s kiss—• 
any kind of a kiss—if you didn’t do things that involved 
having children, if you were to be married. 

She wished some one would tell her definitely about 
that, but every one stopped short and she would never, 
never ask. In the convent you spent the night before 


88 A Handmaid of the Lord 

communion in prayer and preparation. So restful—so 
sweet. She took her rosary to bed with her, and, curling 
up between her pillows, began to pray. The moonlight 
struck across her bed. 

Saul had said “Take it to God”—his love. At last she 
was asleep and looking in the moonlight like the slim, 
pure child she was. 

A mile away Saul, who was sleepless, had a vision of 
her, completely accurate. His arm went out, pretending 
to hold her. 


CHAPTER VII 


i 

QHE awakened early, but there was little time to dress 
^ if she was to get to church for early Mass. Her 
head was heavy from sleep and the beauty had gone from 
her face. This morning she was plain and felt plain and 
her hat persisted in slipping down too far over her face. 

Resolutely as she dressed she tried to keep her mind 
on holy things. She looked away from the mirror and 
practiced the little maxims of the convent which were to 
help in a good communion—murmured prayers, abnega¬ 
tions of self, promises and vows of small self-improve¬ 
ments. She would offer up everything she did to-day. 
She would make it a good day in spite of Tom's coming 
and the complications. They would have strawberry 
mousse for dinner. There would be time to make it 
when she came home from church while she ordered the 
parlors and washed the breakfast dishes. If her father 
would only not lie abed this morning! 

Her mother was downstairs before her. On her head 
a yellow cap of the genus called boudoir, clutching her 
forehead with its tight elastic, was a mockery of negligee. 
She was drinking coffee and offered Veronika some. 

“No—I’m going to communion." 

“You’d better have something to eat." 

“You know I can’t eat, that you have to go to com¬ 
munion fasting." 

“Heathen idolatry," said her mother, and that benedic¬ 
tion Veronika carried with her on her way to church. 

89 


90 


A Handmaid of the Lord 


It was crowded at this early hour. She braced herself 
for a supreme effort of mental control, to hold the single¬ 
ness of her mind on God, to be soon present on the altar. 
Not so easy. People pressed into the pew beside her, a 
woman coughed throatily and incessantly, the priest 
scolded in his instruction, coins jingled in the collection 
basket. It was hard. She took her place in the line of 
communicants, moving toward the altar, now kneeling 
while the ones at the altar were given the sacrament, now 
up again, a little conscious of physical absurdity in the 
poses of these men and women who took attitudes of 
children awkwardly, attitudes remembered from their 
first communion instruction, fingertips touching each 
other, hands bowed. 

The altar rail. In her hands she clasped the starched 
stiffness of the cloth which she with the others spread 
beneath her chin. The priest was coming towards her. 
She moved her mind in one mighty gesture towards 
things unseen that must be believed, had to be credible. 
She sought for awe and for fear, for the complete sub¬ 
jection and isolation of herself before an infinite that 
was definite in manifestation. Her belief came—made 
her limp and faint and sorrowful. God was with her. 

2 

At the church door was Saul. He shocked her out of 
exaltation. Like the morning he was bereft of magic, a 
young man, whose eyes protruded a little and were 
hollowed beneath from lack of sleep. Veronika was jeal¬ 
ous of him because for him the magic of last night was 
apparently not gone. He had for her the same ready 


91 


A Handmaid of the Lord 

smile, with the same love resting in it. She paid him the 
tribute of acknowledging that, even though she was 
vaguely irritated at being confronted with something 
which she could not return. 

The Sunday morning was unkempt, a half-gray day 
that brought out ugliness everywhere, accented the lack 
of beauty in the clothes and the faces of people around 
them, made Valhalla look what it was, a grouping of 
small houses without plan or design, set out as if every 
one had squatted at once and each erected a square shelter 
that rose to a peak in the front of its roof. 

Veronika wanted to get rid of Saul. She knew he 
could not help her. This was the kind of day which 
she recognized perfectly as one which would have to be 
tramped through alone and would be redolent of diffi¬ 
culty. All she could do was to get through it and figure 
up at the end of the day to see how much harm it had 
been able to do her. 

“I have a plan,” he said, and pressed her arm a little. 

“A plan?” 

‘Tm going to get a Ford. Did you know I could drive 
a Ford? And we’ll go miles out in the country, and I’ll 
wrap you up warm and take care of you all day. I’m 
not going to let you do a thing. I’ll bring everything. 
You are to do nothing but let me care for you, all day.” 

He had planned it in the night, a day of delight, 
weighted with the delicious presence of his love and his 
care for her. Because she had looked tired last night, 
because he knew she was not happy at home. It was a 
thing so like Saul—a thing that had a way of wriggling 
through to Veronika’s pity, which she could not bear to 
have touched, so at its mercy was she. Yet the thing 


92 A Handmaid of the Lord 

itself did not tempt her. A gray day, the barren coun¬ 
try, a rattling Ford. She didn’t want it—nor Saul, until 
he could rouse magic again. 

‘Tm sorry, but I couldn’t, Saul. I have all kinds of 
things to do. My brother’s coming up from the U. 
They will all want me at home. Sunday’s my heavily do¬ 
mestic day, you know.” 

His face lengthened almost ludicrously. 

“Couldn’t you leave them—for once?” 

“Not to-day. It would be nicer later anyway, when 
the spring is really here.” 

“You liked my plan ?” 

“Oh, yes,” she lied, gently and unavoidably. 

“And I must leave you now for a whole day. A whole, 
empty day that we might spend together.” 

Why did he assume that she wanted to be with him 
every minute? That even if she had wanted, she would 
go? Why did he stand there, looking so blank, so ab¬ 
surd? She wouldn’t have absurdity in a lover. She 
pulled away. 

“You find another girl and take her to the country,” 
she answered lightly, and her remark sounded cheap and 
raw. She did not care. 

He flinched, but that was all. 

“You’re tired and want to be alone.” 

“Yes.” 

He left her as simply as he had appeared, and Veronika 
felt cheated and worsted. He had stolen the feeling that 
had come so hardly in the church and left her nothing 
except the certainty of having treated him badly. The 
day seemed hours old when she arrived back home, but 
it was only ten o’clock. 

Dishes, beds, temporary order, and then her father’s 


A Handmaid of the Lord 93 

breakfast, filling the house with the fat smell of bacon. 
Veronika concentrated on completion and was through 
with that at last. Her father, Sunday-shaven, went 
downtown for a shine and some papers, and she was 
free. The windows flew up and the smell of the bacon 
went outdoors. She laid a fresh fire in the back parlor 
and pulled all the window shades halfway down. In that 
light the pieces of old furniture weren’t so bad. There 
were always ways to make things livable. Pulling chairs 
to better and more friendly angles, cutting some sprigs 
of the English ivy to make a centerpiece for the dining¬ 
room table, laying out books that gave some distinction 
to the temper of the people who lived in the house. All 
this was not done alone for Tom, but for her own daily 
visitor, self-respect. 

She poured fresh strawberries, smelling like spring, on 
the kitchen table. 

“You’re not going to put those lovely berries into ice¬ 
cream,” scolded Mrs. Pearse. 

“I am,” said Ronny coldly, “and if I’m interfered with 
you’ll get dinner alone for Tom. And I don’t want that 
living room touched.” 

“We’ll see who’s mistress here,” was the response, in¬ 
evitable and angry. But Veronika knew when she could 
safely domineer. She always had. The same battering 
futility—on, on, on, for years and years until it was sec¬ 
ond nature, like twisting your hair in a certain way as 
you put it up. 

Strawberry mousse was a delightful task—one of the 
things that made her feel that she approached the way 
other people lived. She had cut the recipe out of a paper 
and tried it and amazingly it had worked. Rich, rich, 
cream (when she was a child the cream in the pitchers 


94 A Handmaid of the Lord 

was always thin and bluish, and Veronika bought and 
paid for this) and mashed, beautifully fragrant straw¬ 
berries, egg beaten to white foam and then the packing 
with ice, the knowledge that when you again took the 
cover off the can it would be rich and ripe and half solid. 
As she worked she thought of Saul and became more 
gentle toward him. It was a lovely excursion he had 
planned. Not that she quite wanted excursions to be so 
simple as that. Lily would say that there was no point in 
jolting along, like a farmer’s daughter, in a Ford. Lily 
was growing more and more resolute in her push toward 
fine things of the flesh and they were given her willingly 
because while her flesh was so lovely she looked like the 
spirit. Lily was lovely. Veronika never doubted it for 
a minute. 

She had ordered a leg of lamb when she knew Tom 
was coming, and that was roasting now, and potatoes 
were bubbling in their kettle, and the asparagus—aristo¬ 
crat of vegetables, thought Lily—was neatly tied in 
bunches. The day was brightening. A streak of sun 
showed now and then. Upstairs Veronika made the 
shabby bedrooms scrupulously neat. Tom would be home 
any minute. Like her mother she was beginning to antic¬ 
ipate his coming, to forget that it would probably end in a 
quarrel. 

At a front window she stopped and stared. A long¬ 
bodied sedan stood in front of the opening in the bar¬ 
berry hedge. Two men were getting out. Tom—an¬ 
other man whom she did not know. And a girl, a funny 
looking girl. Why would Tom do such things? Bring¬ 
ing these people home. And who on earth are they? 
Surely not relatives—that nice looking man and that gay 
looking girl. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 95 

She rushed to her mother’s door admonishing in a 
fierce whisper— 

“They’re here—do you understand? Tom—and a 
man and a girl. Be careful how you look and don’t put 
on that bright pink powder. Make your room decent.” 

Tom was collegiate, punctilious and immaculate of cos¬ 
tume in all the prescribed ways. His hair had a univer¬ 
sity cut. His tie was from the “toggery shop” and diag¬ 
onally striped, his shoes ran to a slanting peak—custom- 
made shoes that always cost too much. Veronika heard 
his laugh at the door, a laugh that was still uncontrolled, 
a boy’s laugh sharing secrets with his friends. 

“Well, where’s everybody?” He met and kissed Ver¬ 
onika, while she looked beyond him at his guests hanging 
in the doorway. 

“Now, guess,” he said. 

“Guess?” 

His voice was high and extravagantly, deliberately 
gay. 

“Who’s this?” He brought the girl forward. At 
closer range she was still unpleasant to Veronika, as she 
had been in that brief glance from the window. She 
wore sport clothes and a cheapish short fur coat over 
them, with an effect of luxury and elegance that meant 
nothing to another girl. Her hair had been short, for 
she was now trying to twist a few strayed locks back 
into the new neck twist that was the moment’s conven¬ 
tion. She looked at Veronika with practiced eyes, eyes 
that pretended to droop and looked up appraisingly as 
they did so. 

Catastrophe clutched at Veronika. She did not know 
why she was so miserably apprehensive. 

“My bride!” said Tom, and they all three, the two 


96 A Handmaid of the Lord 

men and the girl giggled. Tom struck an attitude and 
hummed the wedding march. 

“Tom!” cried Veronika, “Tom!” 

Across Tom’s levity crossed an upper glance of defi¬ 
ance. 

“This is Peggy.” 

Veronika held out a hand to the girl. Not for worlds 
would she have kissed her. And Peggy, seeing the joke 
fail with her sister-in-law, bridled and minced a little 
and smiled slyly up at Tom as she took Veronika’s hand. 

“And this is Joe Prescott, my erstwhile best man.” 
Prescott came forward from the door. He did not grin 
like the girl and Tom, but looked slightly shamefaced. 

“Where are the folks?” asked Tom. Veronika guessed 
that her mother was listening at the top of the stairs. 

“Mother’s upstairs,” she answered. “You can take 
your wife up to my room.” 

Tom flourished his arm around his wife protectingly. 

“Drop those things there, Prescott, and make yourself 
at home, while I wash Peggy’s face. Ronny’s stunned. 
If she faints, bring her to.” 

His attempted lightness was hopeless. Veronika’s face 
struck across the situation like something the existence 
of which they had forgotten. Peggy let Tom help her up 
the stairs and Veronika heard her deliberately audible 
whimper, “I know she doesn’t love me, Tommy.” 

“It’s a surprise,” said Veronika helplessly to Mr. Pres¬ 
cott. “You see I’m rather swept off my feet.” 

“We should have let you know,” he apologized; “it was 
really rotten of us to blow in like this. But Peggy wanted 
to keep it a secret.” 

“But—when— ?” 

He hedged. “Oh, they’ve just been married. She’s 


A Handmaid of the Lord 97 

really a nice girl. Awfully popular with all the men. 
Crazy about Tom, you know.” 

“Is she a university girl ?” 

“First year. Just a kid—a nice kid.” 

The longer I just stand here, the more often he’ll say 
that, thought Veronika. 

“Won’t you put those wraps down and come in and 
sit down, Mr. Prescott? That’s the living room in 
there.” 

In the living room they both sat, facing each other 
again. Veronika felt preposterously stiff and as if it was 
a pity she couldn’t giggle or do something to put this un- 
happy young man at ease. She asked him about his long 
drive. 

They heard Peggy and Tom come down the stairs nois¬ 
ily with Mrs. Pearse. Mrs. Pearse was protesting and yet 
excitedly pleased. She liked tricks. This was a practical 
joke and she appreciated such things. Her anger would 
appear later. 

With her wraps off Peggy was not even pretty. She 
was an ordinary campus type, small, yet full hipped al¬ 
ready. Veronika guessed that her charm lay in the mas¬ 
tery of a female technique which could handle young 
men of college age. She had seen too many such girls 
in her High School classes not to place Peggy imme¬ 
diately. She thought of Lily and how outraged Lily 
would be. Lily was more than ordinarily impatient of 
cheap girls. 

Mrs. Pearse and her daughter-in-law met with a kind of 
mutual pertness that was characteristic of them both. 
They talked, Mrs. Pearse with a “well, young lady, I 
don’t know what to think, I’m sure” phrase recurrent, 
Peggy with a hand in Tom’s. Tom was affectionate. 


98 A Handmaid of the Lord 

His affection sickened Veronika. She watched him paw¬ 
ing the little bunch of tawdry flesh that he had allied 
himself to, on which he had hung his name, watched his 
utter, fatuous satisfaction in it and knew that he had 
abandoned the grandiose plans of a year ago when he had 
been full of ambitions for personal achievement. 

“All Peggy and I want, for the time, is a little bunga¬ 
low—a love nest, eh, Peggy. We don’t need much.” 
That was the temper of it. 

Veronika excused herself and left the room. As she 
passed the buffet mirror in the dining-room she looked at 
herself. She was white and ugly—nothing but pain and 
scorn written in her face. 

Yet it was only Veronika who seemed to care much. 
Mrs. Pearse was swelled by excitements during the rest 
of that day. Dr. Pearse, his philosophy based on physi¬ 
ology, was disconcerted but calm enough, a prey also to 
the blandishments of Peggy. Veronika watched Tom as 
he in his turn regarded Peggy playing up to her father. 

Veronika was the only blight. 

She cooked and served the dinner. It seemed inexcus¬ 
ably messy, though she had planned it to be otherwise. 
Tom kept leaning towards Peggy who sat beside him. 
They all made certain pretensions on account of Prescott, 
who, Tom told Veronika in the kitchen, was one of the 
big men at the University. 

“He’s a prince, Ronny. You want to make things 
nice for him. I know this was a surprise, but after all 
it’s my business. A man has to marry as he chooses. I 
know that naturally you’ll be critical of your sister-in- 
law. That’s the woman of it.” 

At last Veronika giggled. 

“But you needn’t be so damned superior. If she’s 


A Handmaid of the Lord 99 

good enough for me and would have been for Prescott 
if she would have had him—and he is rich and could buy 
and sell this whole family like an ice-cream cone—she’s 
good enough for you.” 

“Are you happy, Tom?” 

“Don’t I look it?” He paraded his absurd look of 
satisfaction, and Veronika knew that he didn’t know 
what he was talking about. 

She let it go. The dinner was over at last and Tom 
and Prescott and Peggy sat on the porch with Dr. Pearse 
while Ronny washed dishes. Her mother bustled about, 
eager for comment, but Ronny was dumb. 

“Not very pretty, is she? I don’t see what Tom had 
to do that for. Maybe they’ll live here, he says.” 

“And Pm to be slavey for the crowd?” broke out Ver¬ 
onika fiercely. The grease was washing up against her 
wrists. She hated the thought of that girl sitting on the 
porch ogling three men while she washed dishes. 

“Oh, well, we’ll have to keep them for a little.” Such 
surprising compliance in her mother. But she usually 
was that way with Tom. 

“Then I board somewhere else. That’s all. IT1 leave 
you to your fights. You’d be a sweet household. You 
and Tom and Tom’s charming wife.” 

“They’ll hear you.” 

“That nice Mr. Prescott is going to take us for a ride 
in his big car.” Mrs. Pearse shot off at another tangent. 
“He’s a pretty fellow. Why don’t you be nice to some 
one like that instead of that skinny architect? Some one 
with money?” Veronika tried to refuse the ride, but they 
wouldn’t let her. They bundled her up on the front seat 
with Prescott as if that were her bribe to be pleasant. 
Peggy was going to sit with “Father and Mother Pearse.” 


100 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“That won’t last long,” thought Ronny. “That sweet¬ 
ness will wear off in a day or two.” 

She would not talk much to Prescott. She answered 
his questions. She felt that Prescott thought the only 
apology in the situation was due to her. Probably he 
thought Peggy good enough for the shabby house, the in¬ 
coherent mother, the down-at-the-heel doctor or for Tom. 
Tom and he were intimate, but Veronika knew college 
intimacies. Mushroom things that were lopped off when 
one returned to normal family living. Excrescences on 
affection. She had had a number of them herself. 

Prescott was impressed by her college. He knew girls 
she had known there. 

They drove through a half dozen mining towns, all 
only apologies for villages and stopped at a traveling 
men’s hotel for ice-cream. Ronny did not want any and 
again spoiled the party. She and Prescott stayed in the 
car while the others went inside the hotel. 

He glanced at her curiously. 

“This business wasn’t my fault,” he said suddenly. 

“I thought you approved of it.” 

“Well—I don’t think it’s any terrible disaster. She’s 
all right!” 

Veronika looked at him and he flushed. 

“Well, Tom likes her,” he said defensively. 

“And he says you did.” 

“She has a way with men,” he chuckled, “has your fa¬ 
ther going now.” 

“A permanent way ?” 

He was serious. “I hope so—for Tom’s sake. Tom’s 
a great boy.” 

“But you didn’t think enough of him to keep him out 
of this.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 101 

“It’s too bad that you take it so hard,” he evaded. 
“Of course I’m willing to admit that it wasn’t the ideal 
way to do things. You people should have been notified 
and all that. But—” 

“After all you aren’t Tom’s nurse. There’s no use 
rowing with you over it,” she said discouragedly. “But 
it’s hard. It’s hard to see a wretched marriage start, a 
marriage that is bound to be wretched.” 

“Oh, look here, you can’t tell about that. Those soft 
little girls make the best wives often. And Tom’s got 
stuff in him.” 

She turned her head away from him, shaking it a little. 
All her rage melted into pity of the situation, pity and 
knowledge of its cruelty. She saw spread before her like 
a panorama all the weaknesses, all the charm pent up in 
the Pearse family, weakness and charm operating alike 
for its destruction. Inevitably it slipped into calamity, 
and not calamity that dignified, not disaster but petty 
ruin, embarrassment and futility. She mourned for her 
blood with that mounting sense of responsibility for it 
which would never leave her, never give her rest or peace. 
Always she had that haunting desire that they would be 
distinguished, would never do things that were cheap or 
mean. And always, always they slipped into third rate 
actions. She had little sense of pride before this young 
man who had seen this most flagrant of displays of their 
failure. 

He seemed to feel very sorry for her as well as 
ashamed of himself for thrusting himself on her as 
part of this tawdry scheme for fun and excitement. 
But then Veronika could hardly have been a factor 
that he would have reckoned upon. Veronika was un¬ 
expected. 


102 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“You must have a rotten impression of me.” The 
words came out of him uneasily. 

“Oh, as I say, you can’t be Tom’s nurse.” 

“If Tom had given me any idea—I had the idea you 
were all a happy-go-lucky sort of family.” 

“Happy-go-lucky,” she quoted him, grimly. 

He returned stubbornly to his optimism. 

“Peggy’s young. You could show her lots of things.” 

“Peggy’s formed, I know. I’ve been teaching High 
School girls, Mr. Prescott.” 

“You don’t look old enough.” 

She laughed a little wildly. 

“Oh, don’t start to compliment me, please. Not on 
the edge of this.” 

The melancholy procession of Pearses, senior and jun¬ 
ior, filed out of the hotel. Mrs. Pearse, senior, seemed 
to have just licked her lips. Her daughter-in-law walked 
close to her husband, looking around her at the dreary 
town with the superiority of the city bred who has no 
others around her of a higher city level. Veronika she 
seemed to discount. Veronika was only a teacher. 

It was evening when they got back to the Pearse house. 
Prescott was to start back that night. It was a stunt— 
all night driving to reach the University by noon the next 
day. The half concealed plans of the trio had to come 
out in the open. Tom, it appeared, could get his degree 
if he went back. The girl did not mean to return. There 
was no place for her. Tom again took Veronika aside. 

u P e &gy lived with an aunt who raised an awful row 
when she heard of this. She won’t have Peggy there. 
Can’t you keep her here and be decently nice to her for 
a few weeks? The University is out in three weeks.” 

“How long have you been married ?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 103 


“Two months.” 

Veronika averted her face. Possible reasons why the 
girl could not stay on at the college occurred sickeningly 
to her. 

“I’m earning my living, Tom.” 

“All the more reason why Peggy could help here. She 
could help around and be a companion to you. Then we’d 
get a place of our own when I get out of school.” 

“Have you forgotten what this place is like? That 
only last summer you said you never were coming back. 
You know, don’t you, what will break out in twenty-four 
hours? Fights and blasphemy.” 

He scowled. 

“Well, Peggy’ll take her chance. She knows some¬ 
thing about it. She was unhappy at home too. Anyway, 
I tell you there’s nothing else I can do just now, Ronny, 
except give up the degree. And that would be awkward 
because, as a matter of fact, I have the whole Class Day 
exercises in my hands. See ?” 

She saw. She saw how ridiculously young he was, 
how he was sending home his young wife like a package, 
to be left until called for. 

There was nothing else to do. When they went back 
into the living-room, Dr. Pearse was saying largely: 

“Your business, young man, is to get your degree. 
We’ll take care of the young wife for you.” 

And Mrs. Pearse said, “Well, it seems to me it’s I 
who should be saying that. It’ll be me who’ll have the 
work in this big house.” 

Prescott pretended absorption in a three weeks’ old 
Literary Digest. The room was warm by the open fire 
and prettily lighted by the silk shades that Veronika had 
bought for the electroliers. Melodrama had gone. Ter- 


104 A Handmaid of the Lord 

ror was not there. They seemed just an ordinary, middle- 
class, bickering family. The telephone rang noisily. 

“For you, Ronny." 

It was Saul. She had forgotten that there was Saul 
in the background. Saul was saying: 

“I wanted to say good night. I've had a beautiful day 
doing nothing but thinking of you. And I made a sketch 
of your head. But it wasn't good enough, so I threw 
it in the waste-basket. Did my thoughts keep you happy 
all day? Was it nice with your brother?" 

She murmured some reply. It did not matter. He 
only wanted to keep on talking to her himself. 

“Your voice sounds far. Going to go to bed early 
and get rested?" 

The petty protectiveness jarred on her. If he wanted 
to take care of her why didn't he get her out of this? 

“I’m busy," she answered. 

“All right, sweetheart. Good night." 

As she hung up the receiver she was conscious again 
that she had been needlessly brusque. 

“Who's your friend?" asked Tom jocosely. 

“You don’t know him." 

A lean, skinny fellow who comes around making 
goo-goo eyes all the time," said Mrs. Pearse. 

# Prescott looked across at Veronika. She flushed 
silently with anger, not with embarrassment, sitting 
where the firelight intermittently lighted her face, only 
a profile to every one. The profile did something to 
Prescott, as it had done to other people. Its remoteness, 
its delicacy hurt and tempted. Peggy's softness was 
florid. 

“I’m going to get the car ready, Tom. You're com¬ 
ing?" he asked. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 105 

“Yes.” 

“It seems so awful, Tom/' said his wife. But she did 
not sound heart-broken. She sounded as if she wanted 
to excite him. What must she have come from, thought 
Veronika, to find this strange house a refuge, to be even 
willing to stay here? 

They all were embarrassed by the parting. The Pearse 
front doorstep, so well used to altercation, was not ac¬ 
customed to embraces that reeked of passion and desire. 
When it was over and the car had vanished around the 
corner, Peggy came in the house, looking melancholy and 
proud of her desirability. Veronika ignored her, left 
her to her mother and busied herself with preparations 
that must be made for breakfast. 

To-morrow would bring Walter Pater and English 
classes, girls and boys who must somehow be taught 
what was beautiful prose. Her first class was at nine- 
thirty. 

Upstairs Veronika’s mother and Peggy were taking 
possession of Tom’s old room. The room had been 
hastily made habitable by moving much of Veronika’s 
furniture into it—her two cushioned wicker chairs and 
her ivory-colored floor lamp. Veronika knew it was go¬ 
ing on—the excuse would be that it was for to-night, 
to make a good impression on Tom’s wife. Good im¬ 
pression. She hated the words. They were the cover¬ 
ing 5 up or the pretense at covering up what the Pearses 
should have possessed, things which made their own good 
impression without being egged on, urged on. The bluff 
people always were making to each other. Young Pres¬ 
cott had been worried lest he had not made a good im¬ 
pression on her in this scant marriage. Veronika thought 
of him and Tom going back to the University, driving 


106 A Handmaid of the Lord 

along in the sweet cold spring night and talking of Peggy 
and how simple girls made good wives, and in the absence 
of responsibilities that pressed them or made them cross, 
making plans for vast futures which nobly included the 
welfare of every one. She knew that they would talk, 
as they imagined, deeply. That was the way these young 
fellows did. They couldn’t help it. 

Saul did it. To-morrow he would be at her again. 
She was sick of caresses. They were, she felt, forever 
cheapened by the sight of Peggy and her brother. 

The day repeated itself to her tired vision. She had 
tried hard, meant so well to herself and especially to 
God. This was what she had got for it. 


CHAPTER VIII 


i 

TT had been long since there was a guest at the Pearse 
house. That in itself was novelty at first. It was 
an innovation that made the old house unreal and unlike 
itself. The weeks moved on a badly woven pattern of 
school, of Lily’s letter in response to the news of Tom, 
of Peggy’s prying eyes and maddening, ignorant superi¬ 
ority because she was a married woman and Veronika 
a teacher. It seemed to Veronika that her sister-in-law 
reeked of sex. She had packages of old letters from men 
that she kept reading over. She got a sprawling daily 
letter from Tom and sometimes left it in a conspicuous 
place, where its heavily inked phrases of affection struck 
Veronika like the vulgarity of their caressing. Yet 
Veronika tried to be kind. She tried to take what her 
father insisted was the commonplace view of things. 

“You can’t expect people to be like you, Ronny. You 
mustn’t be intolerant. She’s a nice girl and if she makes 
Tom happy none of us has a word to say. That’s all. 
As a matter of fact, I suppose we haven’t anything to 
say in any case.” 

Veronika would level her prejudices and try to meet 
her sister-in-law squarely and pleasantly. But there was 
nothing they could say to one another. They had no 
kinship. 

Peggy met Saul and did her best to find in him a 
substitute for the men she knew at college, but he failed 
her deplorably. She commented on his lack of style, 
107 


108 A Handmaid of the Lord 

on the fact that he didn’t bring Veronika presents. It 
was no use. In her quick way she felt the eyes of 
Veronika disapprovingly on her, old maid eyes. Veron¬ 
ika was twenty-two and Peggy eighteen. And Veronika 
kept on feeling soiled by the whole business. 

School during those late spring months was more of 
a solace than she would have believed possible, in spite 
of the tedium of sitting as preceptress in assembly, in 
spite of the almost constant failure of her pupils to join 
her in any enthusiasm for books. There came compen¬ 
sations. A classroom on a May afternoon, white lilacs 
on her desk, the sun coming softly across the room as 
it came always so warmly and so softly and the stir 
of response in her students to “An Apology for Idlers.” 
She tried to grasp and hold the moment for all of them, 
a moment distantly related to the hours in vaulted cor¬ 
ridors of old universities that she dreamed of, where fine 
thought drifted along with the living of gentle people. 
The sun caught in the hair of a student in the front 
row—beautiful like the lilacs. 

There was Saul, less irritant since he was her only 
escape from home and the always imminent friction, 
worse since Tom s wife had Seen there. Saul’s love was 
easy like the spring days. It became a habit, a mild 
drug that checked pain. She was aware vaguely that he 
was looked on askance by the other teachers, his constant 
presence at the school waiting for her sometimes embar¬ 
rassed her, but she was both busy and lethargic and did 
not notice too much. 

She had let the case of the boy and the girl whom 
she had discovered breaking the rules at the dance go 
with a reprimand. After her day of Peggy she had not 
felt able to proceed far with the matter. Her interviews 


A Handmaid of the Lord 109 

with the girl and boy were short and sharp. The boy 
had been insolent in manner at first, then as he dis¬ 
covered that she did not intend to go far into the matter 
he had become almost familiar. His remark puzzled her 
at the end. 

“All right,” he said. “Bygones is bygones.” 

She was used to being something of a social pariah, 
so that she did not notice the first evidences that the 
teachers talked of her. Saul heard it first, some remarks 
drifting his way about “school buildings being fine places 
on spring nights.” When he found out that they had 
been observed, he and Veronika, coming out of the school 
at that early morning hour—that the boy Elmer had 
seen them and talked of them, Saul became passionately 
anxious to shield Veronika from any difficulty that might 
result. He was eager to carry Veronika off before the 
lot of them, to marry her against her will if need be. 
But Veronika, though she had never been as kind to 
him, was evasive. 

The gossip came to her in an ugly way. She had been 
reading her class poetry, trying to make them see 
“Endymion” in the spring setting. And later, in the 
cloakroom, she came upon two girls talking. 

“I get awful sick of that sloppy stuff Miss Pearse 
reads, don’t you?” 

“Oh, well, she’s like that, you know. She’s soft as 
mush. She and that architect were here one night till 
two o’clock. Keats! I’ll say so!” 

All the shudders, all the defenses in the world could 
not wash it from her mind. She could not even scorn 
it. She was wounded, somewhere internally, in the very 
heart of that dignity and self-honor which she liked 
better than anything on earth. Soft as mush! 


110 A Handmaid of the Lord 

There were only two more weeks of the school ses¬ 
sion. Veronika wanted to run away from them and 
was checked as usual by necessity. She must have her 
month’s pay. She needed the money to pay bills that 
would be forthcoming, for the new metal-topped kitchen 
table and cabinet, for the new fur-bordered cape that she 
had already worn. She had to stay. But she was curt 
with Saul. He must not meet her. He must not touch 
her. And it drove Saul into a kind of delirium of fear 
and of longing for her. He left letters at her house. 
He sent her foolish and charming flowers, some that he 
was naive enough to gather, to the immense laughter 
of Peggy. So finally they had it out. 

“What do we care what they say, darling? Is it 
that?” 

“So you knew too?” 

Saul nodded. 

“And you let me keep on seeing you! Oh, it isn’t that 
I care for their opinion, but it ranks me with them. Do 
you know what they call me ? Soft! Like my brother’s 
wife. Soft like a High School girl discovered in an es¬ 
capade.” Her voice broke cruelly. “And is it any dif¬ 
ferent ?” 

“For God’s sake, don’t you know it is, Veronika? 
Don’t you know what we have?” 

“What have we then?” 

“Love.” 

She seemed to push it from her physically. 

Peggy crept into her room one night when Veronika 
was trying in vain to sleep. She stood at the window 
looking down at the moonlit yard and voiced her dis¬ 
contents and loneliness. Veronika was a poor confidante, 
but Peggy had to have some one. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 111 


“Maybe you people who don’t get married are the 
wise ones,” she reflected. 

“You’ve hardly tried being married,” Veronika said 
resentfully. 

“Oh, well, I guess it’s all pretty much alike. Except 
for getting duller. Tom does give me an awful kick 
though. I hate to think of his being down there alone 
now while here I am—dumped.” 

“Why did you get into it all then?” 

The bride cast a superior glance at Veronika. 

“There are things that get you,” she said succinctly, 
“and then of course in a way it is worth it—keeps you 
nervous of course—” She began to make revelations, 
but only began. Veronika was sitting up staring at her. 

“Go out of my room,” she stammered. “I don’t like 
that sort of talk, do you understand? I hate it!” 

Peggy was bewildered. She thought she had reached 
a high point of friendliness. 

“Don’t be such an old maid,” she said. “What’s the 
use? Loosen up.” 

“Don’t you call her an old maid,” called Mrs. Pearse 
at the door, listening as usual. 

The friendship for “Mother Pearse” had, as Veronika 
had prophesied, lasted only a short time. Peggy was 
now to her mother-in-law the “one who stole my boy 
from me—poor fellow.” It was an immense relief to 
Veronika to find that she did not have to defend Peggy 
—that Peggy was able to fight her own battles, meeting 
the rages of Mrs. Pearse with rages just as primitive, 
hewed from the same block of ignorance and hasty anger. 

“Such a bunch of nuts as you all are,” muttered Peggy 
audibly, and two doors crashed shut behind her on her 
way to her own room, one in the very face of Mrs. 


112 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Pearse. Suddenly Veronika was sorry for Peggy, so 
strange and alone. 

Life was a crazily cut puzzle to be put together each 
day for the occupation of the day and scattered every 
night. No more relevant or progressing did it seem. 
Only the rule was that the puzzle pieces had to be fitted 
together into each other as best you could every day 
and sometimes there was satisfaction in the mere act of 
fitting, of carrying out the rules. There were a few pretty 
pieces, delights, the relief of warmth and sunshine after 
cold harsh winter and unsparing spring days, and there 
was the pleasure of wearing the new fur-bordered spring 
cape that made Veronika so pretty. Peggy was jealous 
of the cape. It was that she coveted, not the napkins 
that Veronika insisted on hemming for her in pursuit of 
decency. She felt that a bride must have linens, some 
sort of equipment. Peggy did not care. But Veronika 
bought damask and hemmed its difficult crisp edges awk¬ 
wardly, for she had no skill in her fingers. 

2 

When Stewart came she was tired and ready for him. 

He came on a day in early June, heralded by a letter, 
and with complete competence put himself and his trav¬ 
eling bags up at the hotel before he sought Veronika. 
The moment she saw him, Veronika got the savor of his 
well-being and its desirability. She had not seen com¬ 
petence in a man for some time. The male school in¬ 
structors were all apparently living precarious lives, 
threatened by hostile boards of education and by their 
debts; there was Saul, who seemed to sort the incidents 
of life loosely through fingers of chance and personal 


A Handmaid of the Lord 113 


love; there was Tom, rakish and grandiose; her father 
paunchy and worn. Against such a background Stewart 
stood out admirably. He was well dressed and heavier 
than she remembered, and as he took command of those 
things which fell to him there was about him an air that 
pricked the bubbles of hysteria in Veronika’s outlook 
on her surroundings. Teachers became only gossiping 
women, not fates bent on her destruction. Peggy was 
a flirtatious little flapper, not a female harpy. Saul a 
callow artistic boy; Dr. Pearse was negligible and his 
wife an obstacle to be surmounted. Stewart’s conver¬ 
sation betrayed no such estimates. He was scrupulous 
in doing the orderly, commonplace thing and that seemed 
to Veronika just then to demonstrate great power of 
management and comprehension. Stewart gave Peggy 
her first Valhalla thrill by presenting her with a five- 
pound box of candy which sent her into waves of coquet¬ 
tish sallies. He discussed mines and mining with Dr. 
Pearse and listened to the flapping futilities of Mrs. 
Pearse. But his eyes stayed on Veronika as if measuring 
the force in her which held him in the midst of such 
incoherence and dinginess. 

He had come on business, to be sure. He was living 
in New York now, in Westover only for the summer, 
and had fallen into the kind of business which brought 
men to Valhalla from the Twin Cities and Duluth, busi¬ 
ness connected with the financial power back of those 
holes in the red clay that yielded iron ore. Dr. Pearse 
grasped the young man’s connection with the place in¬ 
stantly. Like the other members of the fringe between 
the miners and the owning corporations Dr. Pearse had 
at one time and another bought a small interest here and 
there, dreamt his own dreams of having luck come his 


114 A Handmaid of the Lord 


way. Just such small bits of stock as he took on had 
rolled into enormous snowballs of fortune for other men, 
but in his hands they had become worthless paper. For 
all that, he knew about the mines and their ownership, 
their relations to the fortunes of the people of Valhalla. 
He had to know about them just as the doctor in a 
farming country comes to know about crops and cattle. 
It was the hinterland which was responsible for the eco¬ 
nomic life of his patients as well as productive of their 
particular physical ills. 

Into the academic turmoil of the last few weeks of 
school came the sense of men—Stewart and Saul, each 
one vivifying the other, their thought and their atten¬ 
tions like a stimulating drug which had become habitual 
to Veronika. The magic that is the power of knowing 
that she was desired, flowered in Veronika then as it does 
in every reasonably fortunate person, making the body 
actually more beautiful during its bloom and the spirit 
exalted. With the presence and attentions of Stewart 
even the disintegration of the Pearse family seemed to 
check. They had all been under a cloud, their own 
cloud, for long. Nothing was orderly with them. The 
disorderly marriage of Tom was only another thing to 
aggravate the sense of never living life skillfully which 
had always oppressed the girls. In their shabby frame 
house the decent incidents of life skipped them all by, 
social intercourse, the friendliness of entertaining, the 
routine of well-conducted households, which gives up 
hours of the day and weeks of the month and months 
of the year to phases of orderly living. Veronika had 
never learned any current scorn of conventional living. 
Some commonplaces had infinite desirability because of 
their omission from her experience. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 115 

Saul did not know. He was offering her a highly 
spiritualized love while she was still dissatisfied because 
she was on the wrong side of the fence in living. Pride 
in outlawry was the last thing that would have occurred 
to her. There was pride in herself of course in spite 
of outlawry, but that was different. 

Like all young people in love they knew little of what 
was happening to them during those mellowing early 
summer days. There was Saul, bewildered, declaring 
to Veronika by every means in his power that his love 
was rarer and purer than anything that could ever be 
offered to her by any one else, looking on Stewart and 
seeing a man as thickset in body as he must be in emotion. 
What Stewart offered must have been to Saul a labeled 
dish of pottage, and he could not make Veronika see 
that nor quite understand her, for she was not a person 
to go blindly after the first purse that was offered her 
in the name of matrimony. Her spirit had breathed too 
close to his for him to be deceived there. There was 
Veronika, with every sense acutely conscious of the little 
changes which Stewart’s coming had made, of the bracing 
of her pride, seeing tangible things, such as her father’s 
awakened interest in having the lawn decently mowed 
and the hedge clipped, seeing the house of clamor become 
less noisy, seeing the glimmer of respect in the dulled in¬ 
telligence of her mother for herself as a girl properly 
“courted,” and finding Peggy ready to take suggestions, 
even seeking them. 

There was Stewart, busy, interested in Veronika pre¬ 
eminently and then in Valhalla, with its enormous unde¬ 
veloped properties and the chance of more fortune than 
the place had yet given up, stirred by the richness of the 
barren country, shrewdly estimating. It had amused him 


116 A Handmaid of the Lord 

that, though Valhalla was supposedly dry under its local 
laws, he was approached almost on arrival by a bootlegger 
with excellent liquor and he had been able to replenish 
his several flasks from time to time. And with him 
he carried constantly the thought of Veronika to be added 
to him and his fortune and to open to him doors of 
delight. 

Some of the mental food offered to the High School 
English students was different because of all this. There 
may have been sparks which shot out from Veronika’s 
highly charged consciousness of self and lit smaller fires 
elsewhere. Certainly the future of hundreds of workers 
was affected by the coming of Stewart Royden with the 
power to invoke capital. But Saul blundered in work 
and in diplomacy and the contracts for the new school 
buildings were awarded elsewhere. When it happened 
he was too absorbed in his other looming disaster to care 
very much. The notice was in both the newspapers and 
for the first time in two weeks Veronika telephoned him, 
unsolicited. 

‘ I think it’s outrageous,” she said indignantly, “every 
one knows that that firm is a bunch of grafters.” 

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters very much, 
Veronika, except you.” 

“You mustn’t talk so. Isn’t it just that indifference 
that made it possible for them to rule out your plans?” 

Does it matter then? Well, let me come and talk 
to you, will you? Let’s go out for a walk, away from 
this silly, ugly town, this afternoon. Out in the country. 

I can t offer you a car because I’m too near broke.” 

“Of course I’ll go. Come for me at the school at 
three, will you?” 

Because she said that he came, not discomfited, but 


A Handmaid of the Lord 117 

exuberant, and because he was exuberant he failed with 
Veronika. She felt that his spirits, his concentration 
on her alone was consonant with inadequacy. 

They went over the cement sidewalks through the 
little town, then on the rickety wooden sidewalks of the 
outskirts and then along a clay-rutted road. Veronika 
had on slippers which were expensive, walking shoes 
that were not meant for clay roads and was vaguely 
conscious of the damage she was doing to them and that 
she couldn’t afford any new ones that summer. 

“Do you know that this is the first time you’ve been 
nice to me in weeks?” he asked. 

“I’ve been busy. You exaggerate.” 

“Veronika—you’re not going to marry Royden?” 

“How do I know?” 

“He’s not worth you. He’s a good enough fellow 
if you want to use common Chamber of Commerce 
standards. But there’s nothing there for you, Veronika. 
Please don’t. Even if you won’t marry me.” 

“But you’re unfair. You know you couldn’t afford 
to marry me.” 

“If you’d marry me, I could afford anything.” 

“That’s what my brother did. Put the cart before 
the horse. It isn’t so easy. You’ve got to think of 
bread, even if you’re willing to give up the circus.” 

“But I do think of bread. I promise you that you’ll 
never go hungry, if I dig in the mines.” He laughed, 
his throaty, boyish, infectious laugh, and stopped, seiz¬ 
ing her hands. “I’d take care of you, beloved. I’d guard 
you with my life, my body and my soul. I’m not a fool. 
I can always earn. Just because this silly job’s a fluke, 
doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t earn enough to keep us 
going.” 


118 A Handmaid of the Lord 


She let him keep her hands. He hurt her when he 
talked like this. “And after a while I would do my 
supreme piece of architecture. Do you guess what? 
Fd design a house for us. Ours and beautiful. There 
would not be a line in it that wasn’t a line of beauty. 
We would build it where we could when we could. We’d 
work on it together. The nights I’ve lain awake and 
planned our house!” 

“Don’t!” 

“Doesn’t it please you?” 

She pulled her hands away from his, striking them 
together in troubled emphasis. “It pleases me,” she cried, 
“but it’s dreaming. You don’t seem to see that I can’t 
go with you to inhabit a dream house in a dream place. 
There’s my mother, my father, my brother and his wife, 
my sister with her voice, all those things that hold and 
tie me. We’re a messy family. We have to be set in 
order somehow. Dreams won’t do it. We’ve always 
had dreams, Saul. I’ve lived on them. I began to live 
on them when I was old enough to see the failure around 
me. I m—tired of dreams! I want to be cared for! I 
want to straighten things out—to live decently, with 
order, houses, gardens, servants, or at least the prospect 
of those things. I would only add your vision to my own 
and we’d starve together!” 

“It’s Royden, isn’t it?” 

You say I don t understand you, but it’s you who 
doesn t understand,” she told him. For a few minutes 
they were bitterly silent, walking along swiftly, she a 
little absurd in her subconscious effort to spare her shoes 
and he absurd in his disregard for her. Her face 
drooped and, turning suddenly, he saw it. They were in 
the midst of the road, an awkward road, but he stopped 


A Handmaid of the Lord 119 

her and took her in his arms. Because she was truly 
tired and mixed she rested there. 

“Sweetheart—sweetheart—I’ll do anything—I’ll make 
a fortune for you, though I hate fortunes. I’ll do just 
as you say. Only don’t go with Royden. Come with 
me.” 

She thought dully that she didn’t want him to do 
what she said, she wanted him to decide and to say 
for her and to be taken. But she could not. There 
were tears of distress in her eyes. She knew how precious 
and rare his devotion should be and could not truly 
appreciate its value, could not find value in it for her. 
The sky was clouded and around them everything was 
ugly, sprawled fields, overrun with underbrush and scat¬ 
tered with black stumps, gaunt skeletons left by forest 
fires rising out of the woods behind them. As they stood 
she felt a drop of rain on her hand and thought with 
alarm that she had on her new silk hat, the one which 
matched her cape. 

It was not selfishness. It was real worry. She 
could have no other hat for months. Her last month’s 
salary was spent except for enough money to carry her 
through the summer. 

“We must hurry,” she said quickly. “It’s going to 
rain.” 

He looked down at her from under the brim of his 
soft cap. 

“I shall like it,” he answered, “walking home through 
a fine, clean rain with you. But you must be sure to 
change your shoes when you get in and get good and 
warm.” 

She could not tell him that she was thinking that her 
hat might spot. 


120 A Handmaid of the Lord 

They walked back to Valhalla, he talking of his plans. 
He would have to leave for Chicago, now, at once. 
Would she promise to marry him? 

She shook her head. 

“But will you wait ? Don’t marry Royden yet. Wait 
just a little until I have a chance to show you my plans 
for your happiness. Or don’t marry any one. Keep on 
teaching boys and girls for a while.” 

“Perhaps I don’t want to,” she said almost sulkily. 

He rebelled. “I won’t go back to Chicago. I shall 
stay here day and night and watch you. You don’t 
know your own mind. You must marry me. Veronika 
—we’ve felt so close—don’t let’s lose it.” 

It had begun to rain. Great splashing drops fell heav¬ 
ily around them and on them. He held her close as 
they struck the sidewalks again, close, but not close 
enough to protect her from the rain. 


CHAPTER IX 


AT the door of the apartment house where she rented 
a room, Lily paused and buttoned her gloves care¬ 
fully before she went into the street. She lived rather 
far over on Fifty-first and she liked the place. It was 
accessible to Fifth Avenue and one came on the Avenue 
from a street which had dignity. The matter of emer¬ 
gence to Fifth Avenue was always important. Lily 
played her own role to a kaleidoscoping public. At St. 
Patrick’s she went into the cathedral for a minute and 
knelt far up before the front altar, some prayer which 
must have been beautiful coming from her between her 
still parted lips. Then she was again on the front steps 
of the church, a lovely, beautifully dressed figure from 
her gray suede slippers to her hat of black straw accented 
by two waxen camellias. 

She went very directly down the avenue. People did 
not seem to interest her. She had already a strong sense 
of shaping herself to be the center of interest to the 
public, and she knew well enough that two things were 
scarcely done simultaneously, that of being of interest to 
a public and being personally interested in casual people. 
Her aloofness was coupled with a deft presentation of 
herself, both attitudes in perfect harmony. 

At Kurzman’s windows she stopped, her goal reached, 
and looked at the gown in the window. It was of golden 
crepe and it hung from the sloping shoulders of a manni¬ 
kin with exquisite grace. Lily regarded it fondly and 
expertly and she looked as if she had every right to 
so regard it. 


122 A Handmaid of the Lord 

When she entered the shop and made her way to the 
section where such gowns were sold three saleswomen, 
bred in appraisement, stepped forward to serve her. She 
did not ask the price of the gold crepe. She asked them 
to get it from the window—as they did—and she tried 
it on before a folding mirror. There was no question 
about it. It suited her to perfection. 

She did not buy it nor did she show any embarrass¬ 
ment at not buying it. She had found out what she 
wanted to know about the dress and its cost. 

From Kurzman’s she went directly to the studio of 
her music teacher, choosing the inside, not the top, of a 
bus for conveyance. Lesone, the teacher, was not yet 
there. In the studio the accompanist was trying over 
songs. She looked wisely at Lily. 

“Lesy’s not here yet,” she said, “must have met a 
friend.” 

It was obvious enough to both of them when Lesone 
came in, a half hour later, that he had been drinking. 
His cheeks were purplish and his manner surly. He 
made no apologies. 

Lily stood up and went to work. The stubby little 
Italian lost his irritation as she sang. He snapped from 
alcoholic absorption into criticisms. 

“It is good,” he said, “at last.” 

Lily did not seem in the least surprised. 

“I’m stopping my lessons,” she remarked. 

The little man bristled. “Stopping—why?” 

“Haven’t I had enough?” 

“You are beginning.” 

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Signor Lesone. 

I think I know where I stand. I haven’t anything big 


A Handmaid of the Lord 123 

and you know it. And I’ve got to get on the stage be¬ 
fore long.” 

He glanced her up and down in comprehension. 

“While you are so young and beautiful?” 

“That’s it. And while I can make a lot of money.” 
She touched her throat. “There’s no opera here and we 
both know it. I don’t care. I wouldn’t like it anyway. 
Stuffy opera house dressing-rooms with a lot of others 
and a dozen fat old women ready to cut your throat if 
you don’t crack on high C. There’s more fun in other 
things.” 

“You want,” he mocked her, “to sit in a swing of red 
cloth roses and kick your slippers over the footlights.” 

She laughed engagingly. 

“Well, what else can I do? Study and study and 
know all about everything and then give music lessons. 
I’d have to go back to Valhalla to do that. Valhalla 
is where I come from—a horrid little mining place. I’d 
have to give lessons to all the miners’ daughters. Why 
shouldn’t I do something that will get the things I want, 
instead ?” 

The accompanist had gone out, casually, without even 
a farewell. , Lesone shook his head. 

“You want your limousine, your beautiful dresses, 
your jewels, your calf-lovers.” 

She looked at the stubby little man decrying her am¬ 
bition, and with something of Veronika’s definiteness 
tried to elucidate. 

“Not for themselves. I want the curtain rising on 
me, the center of everything. I want lovely pictures of 
me in the magazines. I want to be admired. Why 
shouldn’t I?” 


124 A Handmaid of the Lord 


He tapped his cheek with pudgy fingers and medi¬ 
tated. 

“All right—maybe you should. See Wanger then. He 
will coach you in the pretty tricks for twenty dollars 
half an hour, and if he likes you he will call up Zeismer 
and tell Zeismer about you, and if you do not change 
your mind and, especially if you do not let them make 
a fool of you, you will see your name in electric lights 
and ruin your voice singing to a lot of imbeciles who 
will not hear a note you sing unless the words are vulgar. 
You will live on Park Avenue and spend your time be¬ 
tween rehearsals of ‘Love in Rosetime , and dressmakers 
and photographers.” 

“But if it’s what I want—” 

“If it’s what you want you will get it. You are that 
type of young lady. Not soft.” 

Yet as she smiled at him she looked both sweet and 
soft 

“I suppose that the reason I like to keep you is that 
you work so well and are so pretty. That means nothing 
to you, does it?” 

She met his shrewd glance gracefully. 

“Of course it does. It means a lot.” 

“Always so pretty,” he almost sighed. 

“Of course I am a Catholic,” she said somewhat irrel¬ 
evantly. 

He laughed uproariously. 

“You are a very wise young lady. I will write a note 
to Wanger for you.” 

When she went up the Avenue again she had the note 
to Wanger in her purse. But she did not attempt to see 
him that day. She went back to her room and removed 
any faint traces of disorder that clung to her. After 


A Handmaid of the Lord 125 

that she lunched at a sandwich shop, cheaply, for after 
all Aunt Kate’s allowance was limited and her father 
sent her less and less. What money there was had to be 
used wisely. It was wisdom, she felt, to sit during the 
afternoon in a front seat at the Forty-third Street theater 
and watch Peggy Angell as she sang and danced, watch 
the little tricks with which she captivated her audience, 
watch her habits of gesture and her costuming. After 
that, for social experience, she went to the Ritz, where 
she had a late engagement for tea. The girl with whom 
she had made the engagement was some one she had met 
in Westover one summer who had kept in vague and dis¬ 
connected touch with her during the last two years. 
There were also two men. 

Marion could not afford the Ritz. Neither could 
Lily nor one of the men who was taking an unauthorized 
afternoon off from business. The other man was the 
one on whom they all relied. Vaguely he was engaged 
to Marion, that status giving him certain privileges. 
Actually the tale ran, as Lily had heard it, that he didn’t 
want to marry too soon and Marion wasn’t sure of what 
she wanted, and why should they marry anyhow “just 
yet” and tie themselves up while they were young? It 
was no affair of passion, but simply an alliance for the 
sake of the companionship which each afforded the other 
on parties. 

Lily looked around her at the women who came and 
went and noted costumes and habits. But that did not 
keep her from being good company. She knew when 
to smile and what to say and how to dance to perfec¬ 
tion. It was all her escorts wanted, and if she was 
able to get any bonus out of her presence in the place 
that was her own affair. At five o’clock something 


126 A Handmaid of the Lord 

clicked in her mind and she was sure that she must have 
the golden crepe dress. The question now was how 
to pay for it. A hundred and seventy dollars did not 
appear like magic in her budget. 

They were loath to break up the party, but Lily, it 
appeared, must go. The impecunious young man took 
her home in a taxi and she said good-by to him expedi¬ 
tiously and went to bathe and read her mail in that de¬ 
licious independence which she loved. Mail never dis¬ 
turbed Lily as it did Veronika. She was too highly in¬ 
dividualized. So she read with faint look of scorn a 
letter from Tom, who thought that Veronika was un¬ 
sympathetic with Peggy, but that Peggy and Lily both 
had artistic temperaments and would be chums, and was 
she coming home for the summer—one of Tom's char¬ 
acteristic letters which always became sentimental incor¬ 
rigibly. There was a note from Veronika with dry and 
caustic reference to Peggy, and a mention that Stewart 
Royden was in Westover and she didn’t know whether 
she would marry him or not. She wrote that she sup¬ 
posed that Lily, having an artist’s viewpoint, would think 
she was mad to give up such a man as Saul, whom she 
sketched with some accuracy. And then Veronika went 
on writing and writing well about life and the place that 
marriage had in it. It took Lily a very short time to 
look over these pages. She had an air of skipping. The 
end of the letter was a suggestion that she might come 
home for the summer. 

Lily had already decided to do that as soon as she 
saw Wanger and got her affairs in order. Up in West- 
over old Mr. Pearse was failing, and failing miserably, 
in mind as well as in body. Lily did not consider West- 
over as a possibility for a vaction. Other places, where 


A Handmaid of the Lord 127 

she would be purely guest, meant more money than she 
could get together. 

She laid the letters on her table and went down the 
hall to the bathroom and a hot bath. Soon the steam 
was rising pleasantly and she released herself into a 
dream of golden crepe dress, and a black hat, with lace 
(or was lace going to be common after all). If Veronika 
married she would really need that dress. They would 
possibly let her pay for it in installments. She could 
wear it when she sang for Wanger the first time in the 
fall. On the strength of that it was worth buying. 

Hamilton Bennett took her riding that night. She had 
allowed Hamilton Bennett to discover her one night at 
one of the mixed “private” hotel parties which she at¬ 
tended. She was holding him off because she would not 
let him regard her as one of the girls whom he could 
pick up for a month or two’s flirtation and also because 
she meant to utilize the Bennett connection later. With 
him she was less sophisticated than she had been at the 
Ritz, more the ambitious convent girl who was striving 
to become a great singer. Resultingly Bennett talked 
of his own future and she did not have to listen, only 
to let the wind drive along her face and absorb the night 
and the sense of little fleeting villages as they sped along 
the Albany Post Road. They stopped at Tumble Inn 
for three dances, and then Lily let him pay his ten-dollar 
check and they went back to the city. He stopped the 
car once on pretense of looking at a view, but Lily leaned 
forward to admire it so ingenuously that he had a sudden 
disgust with petting and thought that all girls weren’t 
alike after all. He kissed her good night, but with only 
pleasant fervor and some respect. 

Lily did not dream of him. She dreamed of nothing. 


128 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Cold-creamed to exactitude she said a prayer and got into 
bed quickly. In the morning she wanted to see Wanger. 

Lesone’s letter was successful. She got by the pre¬ 
liminaries and Wanger saw her. He affected a great 
man’s busy manner, preoccupation and impersonality 
tinged with boredom. Lily, who with the rest of the 
world was well informed as to the progress of his latest 
divorce suit, wore her pale gray clothes. 

“Coaching for musical comedy, I suppose?” he re¬ 
marked. “And imagining that all I have to do is to 
suggest a few tricks and you’ll be in headlines.” 

Beauty was cheap in New York, especially in Wanger’s 
world, and well Lily knew it. She did not rely on it 
alone. To it to-day she had added a touch of mystery 
and yet in her singing she tried to put vivacity which 
did not fit her. 

“Look here, my girl,” said Wanger, “there’s no use in 
a girl who looks as much like a convent product trying 
to hand out any jazz. Delicacy is what you want.” 

The fire leapt up in her eyes. That was what she 
wanted useful appraisement like that, not scales for days 
and days and endless days. 

“Do you think I’ll get there?” she asked. 

“I’m no prophet—nor yet an insurance agent,” he said 
roughly. “You have a good voice—pretty lifeless. Good 
for a church choir in a Middle West city just now. 
Great for funerals. It needs life and sentiment and— 
well, do you want to work ?” 

“Oh, yes, I’m going to work,” she said. 

“Whether or no?” 

“Whether or no.” But she deferred beautifully to 
him in that last statement as if his no would be impossible 


A Handmaid of the Lord 129 

and yet if it should be forthcoming it would be a great 
obstacle. 

“All right. Now—when do we start ?” 

“In three months. If I can get the money. ,, 

“That’s all right. Pm going to Europe anyway this 
summer. When I get back then, young lady. We’ll see 
—don’t fill up on ice-cream sodas all summer. And do 
just as Lesone taught you when you practice. He’s 
the only teacher in New York.” 

Lily had found that out in her process of sorting out 
teachers when she came to New York nine months ago. 
She was almost equally sure that Wanger had what she 
wanted now. Each of them, Lesone and Wanger, was 
the best in his own line and Lily meant that the addition 
of them in her should make her superlative. She knew 
her New York and she was not a person who made mis¬ 
takes easily. 

Yet her knowledge of New York had come to her in 
a strangely short time. It was because she could classify 
the things and parts that did not interest her, because 
her taste was so perfect. She never 1 coveted any of the 
cheaper luxury that was strewn around her everywhere, 
clever imitations of good clothes, sudden fashions. Her 
path had led very directly to the Ritz, the Plaza and the 
world of unconnected young women living alone in New 
York with reasonable decency and considerable enjoy¬ 
ment. There were girls who became deliberately bizarre, 
girls who went up like rockets in quick and wealthy mar¬ 
riages and descended as suddenly, girls who dissipated. 
Through them and through their companioning Lily 
directed her own path gravely. 

There was nothing left of the impressionable country 


130 A Handmaid of the Lord 

girl or the unsophisticated convent student. No elabo¬ 
rated food, no extravagance of entertainment could 
either shock or profoundly interest her. She liked better 
to sift out people as she sifted out their motors, to 
know which were permanent acquisitions and which were 
not. And her gazing and learning were often subcon¬ 
scious. She had none of Veronika’s intenseness of per¬ 
ception. She went along calmly and took what she needed, 
and the simplicity of her assumption was backed by her 
beauty, so it was given to her. 

Of course if her grandfather did have considerable 
money and did leave it all to her, as every one quietly 
prophesied that he would, it was not unwise to be ready 
to use it. 


CHAPTER X 


i 

I T seemed to Veronika, waiting for her sister’s train, 
that railroad stations were the most dramatic and 
terrible places in the world. She knew every inch of the 
Valhalla station. Her mother had made scenes there 
when she went away to college. She had come back 
here after she had left college in that painful uprooting, 
and in this station sensed the fullness of her unavoidable 
sacrifice. Here, against the red paint of the long narrow 
waiting house, was the iron bench on which she had sat 
when she waited for Saul to leave her two weeks ago, 
that distraught and somehow terrible young man with a 
white face and frightening emotion. Twice he had al¬ 
most refused to go. There was nothing that he could 
do if he stayed, but he seemed to want to be in Valhalla 
even if he sat in the hotel lobby or walked the streets, 
so that he could be near Veronika. Even that could not 
shake her into more than pity. The more eager and bitter 
his love became, the more response died in her as if it 
were smothered, the more unreal did life with him be¬ 
come and she fled back to the reality of even her home. 

What all this love was she did not know, but she felt 
it sometimes comic and sometimes desperately unreason¬ 
able. It refused to take into account things like families 
and duties and yet when it attempted to spread itself 
into romance there were no wings. If he could have 
offered to take her away with him somewhere she might 
have been pulled into going. But against his desperate 
131 


132 A Handmaid of the Lord 

desire lay the foolish fact that he could not pay her fares, 
that he was preposterously poor and that escape became 
a matter of something that would cost under twenty 
dollars apiece. 

But it had hurt. 

“No one will ever love you like this,” he had said, and 
secretly and sadly she guessed that he spoke the truth. 

They had left it as an unresolved situation, with a 
doubtful outcome. She would make no promises, even 
about Stewart. That was only fair to Stewart, who, it 
must be admitted, was acting very decently and consid¬ 
erately, keeping in the background and making it clear 
that his purpose in Valhalla was to do business with the 
mines. He had been far more comfort to her than Saul. 
But at the end when Saul was about to go, when the 
whistle of the train was threatening to sound, a wave of 
aching gratitude for his love, a terrible pity for him, 
came over Veronika. She pulled his head down to hers 
as they stood in the darkness outside the railroad train 
and kissed him passionately. 

He had almost not gone. But she had insisted that 
he must. And as he went he tried to smile because of 
her kindness and she felt her heart hurt intolerably. 

That was two weeks ago. Every day these trains 
brought his letters, his flood of letters that never tired 
of saying the same thing over and over again, that found 
endless new ways to say it, letters written on scraps of 
paper, on the back of menu cards, on torn pieces of 
plotting paper. He seemed to find his only outlet in writ¬ 
ing her and when she answered and mailed her letters 
on this very train she always felt that they said too much 
or too little. 

She had come down alone to meet Lily. At the last 


A Handmaid of the Lord 133 

minute her father had been called on a case by one of 
the few faithful patients who remained to him, and her 
mother might or might not appear. She was storming 
when Veronika left home. Peggy was not yet dressed, 
as it was only eight o’clock in the morning, but Veronika 
had been up early. School was closed now and she was 
becoming less tired. She had opened all the windows 
in the house and put vases of flowers wherever she could 
to hide the shabbiness. She had even reclaimed one of 
her wicker chairs from Peggy to make her room, which 
was to be Lily’s now, pleasanter. But she was afraid 
for Lily. There was a feeling that came on entering this 
station, and was present all the first few days after you 
came back from anywhere, a feeling of depression and 
of the irremediable ugliness of Valhalla, a sunken and 
horrid feeling as if you had shot down suddenly in an 
elevator. Veronika had that feeling always until she got 
used to things. So she feared that it would be even 
worse for Lily. Lily had had a great deal in the past 
years. The mention of the Plaza and Ritz, her casual 
account of motor trips in Pierce Arrow cars all weighed 
on Veronika this morning. A servantless house—her 
mother—and the train came in, joltingly, the branch train 
from Duluth, that stopped at every station and always 
did its best to take the edge off a transcontinental trip. 
An early morning train which brought people to a long 
day of discomfiture. 

Her first impression was of Lily’s dress and her beauty. 
Lily never wore the conventional dark blue for traveling, 
and she stood out among the passengers on the train 
as they dismounted. Her beige-colored suit of flannel 
fitted her perfectly and was simple and yet as distin¬ 
guished as her plain, beautifully shaped hat and her slip- 


134 A Handmaid of the Lord 


pers of tan leather. Her traveling bag was brown—a 
slim, elegant one which had been Bennett’s single allowed 
present and she had allowed another man to match it 
in a dressing case. As she smiled at Veronika, Veronika 
forgot admiration for sheer affection and kissed her 
twice. 

It was lucky that they had senses of humor. 

“We can get what they call a taxi, but they are filthy 
dirty Fords. You’d ruin your suit. If you don’t mind 
walking? It’s too stupid, but father had to have the old 
bus this morning and I didn’t really think its appearance 
would thrill you much.” 

“No paint on anything as usual* I suppose,” said Lily 
blithely. “I’d much rather walk. That’s a terrible train. 
I’d forgotten how awful it was till I got on in Duluth.” 

So she arrived. At the Pearse house her mother and 
sister-in-law put on pleasant faces for the minute. 

“So you’ve been allowed to come back at last to your 
mother,” said Mrs. Pearse, “from those who tried to 
turn you against me.” 

Peggy preened herself. She had dressed for Lily ob¬ 
viously, because she had become slovenly lately. But her 
effort failed under Lily’s casual glance and the contrast 
of Lily’s clothes, which were better than Peggy’s and 
quite as fashionable. 

Lily did not suffer as Veronika had been afraid that 
she might. She did not mind the appearance of the house, 
the plaster weighted by cracks and the faded wall-paper 
and all the other things that gave Veronika such acute 
worry and disgust. She had a sleep and began to prac¬ 
tice. After a day or two she was a decorative presence 
whose ends pursued themselves calmly even in that con¬ 
fused household. There was no wish in Lily to better 


A Handmaid of the Lord 135 

it. She laughed at Veronika making porch cushions and 
insisting on salad forks. And when there was a quarrel 
she got out of the worst of its violence somehow. There 
were many quarrels after Tom came home. There were 
subdued quarrels in the bedroom which the young hus¬ 
band and wife shared. There were revivals of the old 
corridor quarrels when Mrs. Pearse wandered from room 
to room, excited by vague sensing of slights and injus¬ 
tices done to her. But though the irritation of the situa¬ 
tions remained, the horror had gone out of them, at least 
for Tom and Lily. They knew that they were adult and 
could escape. With Veronika, who never had that sense 
of escape as definite, except when her dreams became very 
rarefied, things were harder. 

Yet in one way she was the center of the household, 
being the center of unfulfilled romance. Stewart re¬ 
mained in Valhalla and came to see Veronika nearly every 
night. His restraints were disappearing now, subtly 
changing into impatience. He knew that they all wanted 
Veronika to marry him and he was growing tired of the 
incessant presences of the Pearses perhaps, for he grew 
more pressing, more insistent in his own substitute for 
romantic ardor. 

“Why won’t you marry me, Veronika?” 

The question was losing meaning for her. It was only 
something she had to find the answer to, like an arith¬ 
metic problem, and she put off doing it. 

“Why won’t you stop asking me and leave things 
alone ?” 

“Because we ought to be married. It’s ridiculous for 
me to leave you here when you’d be better off with me.” 

“Is it a social conscience?” she mocked. 

He put his arm over her shoulders as they sat in the 


136 A Handmaid of the Lord 

porch swing that creaked on rusty iron chains. She was 
growing accustomed to that, between him and Saul. Al¬ 
most she had come to need caresses and demonstration. 
She was more graceful about them now, in a manner 
which seemed to distress Stewart and make him suffer. 
Between his presence and the drug of Saul’s letters she 
swam in a mist of being loved all the time. But she was 
reluctant to go further with it except indeed that things 
might be settled and she done with this tiresomeness of 
discussion, discussion, argument and question. Beyond 
all that must lie a different kind of happiness based on 
order of mind and life. And she knew that she was 
very, very tired of battling. 

“You know it’s not conscience,” he told her with his 
lips close on hers. “I want you whether I will or not. 
It’s beyond me, Veronika. I’m—helpless.” 

“And yet if I wouldn’t, you’d marry some one else.” 

He groaned. 

Veronika, darling, it’s no use. I can’t play the des¬ 
perate romantic lover. I can’t say that I’d undoubtedly 
kill myself if you refuse to marry me. I wouldn’t. I’d 
keep on being a man and myself. But that doesn’t 
change this.” 

That was Stewart. He was gentled by his desire, but 
not stupefied, and perversely Veronika resented it. She 
wanted in him the tremendous ardors of Saul as well 
as his own competence in handling himself. She wanted 
him swept away and restored. She wanted everything 
and dimly she guessed that it was impossible to have 
it. 

“We waste time,” said Stewart, “with all this arguing. 
We should have been married and away together months 
ago.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 137 

Veronika shivered and he asked her with faint exulta¬ 
tion : 

“Are you afraid, dear?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” 

They heard Dr. Pearse crunch along the narrow drive¬ 
way, come up on the porch and seat himself in one of 
the wicker chairs. 

“Good evening, Royden. Fine night. On this sort of 
night Valhalla becomes actual paradise.” 

Somehow they all gathered. Tom and Peggy came 
back from somewhere, doubtless a motion picture. Peggy 
was saying: 

“I think, Dr. Pearse, that Tom ought to get to work. 
I tell him that there’s no harm in doing any kind of 
work. Why shouldn’t he go into business in Minne¬ 
apolis? There’s lots of work if you want to do it. He’s 
so high and mighty.” 

Peggy was no longer lover. She was woman, wanting 
to be supported and fed well and housed well and using 
the power which she still had over Tom to get her way. 
Even as her sharp little voice gave directions she was 
working herself closer to him on the steps. Lily and 
Veronika hated her way of doing it. 

“He’s tired, poor boy,” said Mrs. Pearse. “Too young 
to be married—all worn out with worry.” 

“Do shut up,” answered Tom. “I can look out for 
myself.” 

They were growing to have fewer and fewer restraints 
in front of Stewart. Veronika felt sorry for him, light¬ 
ing a cigarette and keeping out of it. He was better 
than any of them. He would take her out of this and 
help them. 

She got up out of the swing and took the few steps 


138 A Handmaid of the Lord 

that made her the center of the little group on the porch. 
The moon, coming through gaps in the old woodbine, 
fell on her face and its strange, detached resolution. 

“Stewart is going to marry me,” she said. 

So she put her betrothal, and it seemed in those minutes 
as if he and not she were taking all initiative. In the 
flutter that followed she remained silent. Tom was jocu¬ 
lar. Dr. Pearse tried to put his arm around Veronika 
and she avoided it. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Pearse, “and who’s consulted me? 
Am I her mother?” 

But they paid no attention to that. Some one went 
off to the drug store and bought ginger ale and they 
drank that in awkward honor of the occasion. Stewart 
had turned white and silent—then he met the two Pearse 
men in their congratulations and Lily came downstairs 
and sat beside Veronika, and whispered to her, “You’re 
right. It’s fine. I’m glad.” 

“And am I expected to get up a big wedding?” queried 
her mother. 

“There’ll be no big wedding,” said Veronika. 

“Jump over the broomstick like we did,” suggested 
Tom. 

Veronika turned to him. 

“No,” she said, “my wedding will be different from 
yours.” 

2 

It was different. In a shabby, inadequate way it car¬ 
ried out every convention. There were clothes to be 
bought and for those Dr. Pearse surprisingly produced 
five hundred dollars, borrowed, they knew, on some in- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 139 

surance, but in those days of excitement it did not seem 
to matter. Lily helped to get the clothes. They pored 
over catalogues from Marshall Field’s and even from 
Franklin Simon’s. They studied hints of fall fashions. 
Lily wanted Veronika to have two beautiful outfits of 
lingerie which she said Veronika could “get along with,” 
but Veronika did not want to get along with two sets. 
She wanted six and she had her way, though they were 
not of the fine georgette that Lily wanted, trimmed with 
lace, but sheer white things of handkerchief linen made 
by a Valhalla woman who knew how to embroider deli¬ 
cate monograms. All her life Veronika had wanted six 
sets of fine-spun lingerie. She used to handle them in 
their tissue-papered drawer when they came home as if 
they were indeed a dream’s fulfillment. 

They were the key to the trousseau. 

And she must be married a Catholic, though they were 
all ludicrously unfamiliar with what a Catholic wedding 
involved. She must sanctify this venture. Veronika 
saw a priest in the vicarage, a young priest who often 
read the Mass she attended. He was full of formulae. 
She must have the young man come to see him and he 
would be instructed in the way of Catholicism. The 
priest argued slightly with Veronika because she was not 
marrying a Catholic. But that could not be helped and 
he ultimately recognized it. He spoke to her gravely 
and with fine diffidence about what marriage must mean 
to a Catholic woman. The accent of his thought was 
on the children of the union. Veronika listened in re¬ 
spectful dreaminess. It was not quite clear to her what 
he was talking about, and the children of whom he spoke 
were so remote that she did not even feel embarrassed. 
And it did not occur to the priest that she did not fully 


140 A Handmaid of the Lord 

grasp his admonitions nor to Veronika that the generali¬ 
zations were extremely practical in their application. 

Children, thought Veronika—yes, some time I shall 
have children. But she still wondered how children came 
about. One could know so much and yet have such gaps 
in the knowledge. Marriage was a strange unfulfilled 
sacrament. In her contemplation of it, the warnings and 
disciplines of the priest passed by unargued, unchal¬ 
lenged, not even comprehended. 

But though she loved to think of her marriage as a 
sacrament, she felt none the less the lack of place and 
distinction of her quasi-religious wedding. The Pearses 
were not Catholic—she herself a stray parishioner, a 
kind of anomaly, powerless to express the fervor which 
the thought of God upon the altar could excite and recon¬ 
cile it in the priest’s eyes with the fact that she belonged 
to no young ladies’ sodality. Her religion was too close, 
too personal, too intense, too unrelated to externalism 
for the rites of the church to help her at a time like this. 
She discovered indeed that there were no rites for a 
Catholic who married a Protestant. The two people 
slipped under the fence of excommunication, but they 
were not encouraged in doing so. There was no cere¬ 
mony, only the few rather cold words said in the priest’s 
house in the presence of witnesses, the papers which dealt 
largely with those remote children who were to be brought 
up Catholics. 

But before that were the other arrangements. It was 
August, so that there were few of the people whom Val¬ 
halla considered important remaining in the hot little city. 
Most of these Veronika, by virtue of her father’s long 
residence, could have properly asked to come to her 
nuptials, but they were not at hand and she was not sorry. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 141 

Stewart’s family, the Roydens, did not come. His 
mother wrote Veronika pleasantly with possibly some 
faint accent on the fact that Stewart had made his own 
choice and she wished the young couple all happiness. 
His sisters did not write. Their cards came enclosed in 
the family gift, a chest of silver that made Veronika 
draw her breath in sharply with delight. 

It was amazing to her that possession pleased her so 
much. These acquired things filled her with a sense 
of well-being, of protection, of stepping over the line 
that all her life had made a pariah of her. Presents 
drifted in. One or two of her college classmates heard 
of the event and made her gifts. From Westover the 
convent nuns sent her a present of an embroidered table¬ 
cloth, and Aunt Kate, apprised by Lily of Veronika’s 
needs, helped fill out the trousseau. There was nothing 
from Michael of course. Since Michael had left West- 
over and gone to practice law in Albany less and less 
had been heard from him or indeed of him. The thought 
of Michael still aroused apprehension in Veronika. But 
she did not think of him often now. She was the center, 
the hub of the universe, and it was a time of plenty 
according to her meager standards. 

Stewart let her see her power over him more and more 
now. He was completely orthodox. This was the time 
when he should be subject to Veronika and he was so—- 
so much indeed that the aspects of Stewart as a husband 
hardly presented themselves to her for most of the day. 
There were phases of the business ahead of her that 
Veronika did not so much avoid as overlay. But she 
was conscious of occasional and surprising solicitude 
from her mother and of Peggy’s sensuous thoughts fol¬ 
lowing her about. Sometimes she used to stop and won- 


142 A Handmaid of the Lord 


der if she knew enough to go on. There were gaps in 
her mind which she could not bear to let any one fill. 
Occasionally the glamour of possession lapsed and she 
stared flatly at the fact that in return for what she was 
getting she would have to be Stewart’s wife and whatever 
that involved, of which she was not well-informed. But 
that could be overlaid again with a fresh layer of activity 
and the quick challenge that the thing was not yet upon 
her. Anything might happen yet—her constant com¬ 
panion of luck and superstition was at her side until in¬ 
deed the night before. 

The frame house was full of activity and even bland¬ 
ness. Upstairs Veronika’s proud new wardrobe trunk 
stood open, its flowered cretonne inside lining brightening 
the hallway. In Lily’s room hung Veronika’s new clothes, 
immaculate on their hangers. Downstairs in the front 
parlor were ranged the gifts that had come, the chest of 
silver and its subordinate offerings. Veronika herself had 
been absorbed in making the best of the rooms with 
flowers and shaded lights and was now in the kitchen, 
where she was stirring mayonnaise for the salad to be 
served to-morrow at lunch. They were to be married in 
the morning and, after a lunch with the few guests, to 
leave Valhalla. 

The kitchen windows were up, the evening wind came 
in through muslin curtains of Veronika’s making. She 
heard a woman talking to Lily in the parlor—neighbors 
and old friends, who had not been in close touch with 
them for years, were surprisingly nice about this wed¬ 
ding, possibly because of the rumors of Stewart’s wealth. 
The mayonnaise thickened and whitened to perfection. 
Homesick peace invaded Veronika. She felt that she 
could hardly bear this going away. This was her scene 


A Handmaid of the Lord 143 


of struggle and dream. This was hers, the habitat of 
her life, and she was forsaking it. She went to the 
window and looked out on the circle of aged fir trees 
just as she had used to when she was a child. She knew 
what was happening to her. She was stepping from 
one cycle of life to another and she could never step 
back. In place of the old, cruel, but almost endeared 
responsibilities there was coming an unknown life, one 
of which she knew nothing. For a chest of silver, a five 
hundred dollars’ worth of new clothes, for the yielding 
to a man’s insistence, she was leaving all this—her youth, 
her independence, herself that was herself. And Saul 
was suffering hideously. He had written. He had wired. 
He had begged her. Saul was passing out of her life 
now like all the rest of her turbulent youth and she did 
not want him to go. She did not want to trade her 
precious disturbances even for new peace. But the mo¬ 
ment of barter was almost there. 

On the driveway she heard the rush of Stewart’s car 
and the sound of his voice—his and Tom’s as they got 
out together and crunched down the graveled path. The 
whole fatuous world was going on with its plans for 
her disposal. Veronika switched out the light quickly 
and rushed to the door. She didn’t want to be there 
when they came in. She didn’t want to talk to Stewart. 
She didn’t want to see Stewart. In a second she was out 
of the back door and slipped along in the shadow of 
the fir trees, bound somewhere—she did not know—out 
of her destiny, if she could escape. 

She was only in the shadow of the old hedge when 
she heard some one speak to her. 

“Who is it?” she asked almost breathlessly, as if this 
flight through a back yard were in truth dramatic escape. 


144 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Saul's low throaty voice, all the laugh gone out of it, 
answered her: 

“It’s only me, Veronika. Don’t let me frighten you. ,, 

“But where did you come from?” 

“It doesn’t matter. I came to see you. I wanted to 
see you and I was afraid you wouldn’t let me so I 
hung around the house.” 

She stood staring at him, only a tall dark presence in 
the black night, and then felt his hands on her shoulders. 

“I wanted to see you,” he said passionately, “to see 
if you’re happy or just a fool. I can’t bear to have 
it. I know you love me. It’s not that other fellow. 
Oh, Veronika, Veronika!” 

He was almost sobbing. All the stress of the weeks 
he had gone through burst on Veronika with intolerable 
pain. She forgot everything, even Stewart, in trying to 
comfort him for a minute. And she almost held him 
in her arms. 

“You do care for me,” he pressed. 

“Of course I care,” she answered softly, “of course. 
But I’m not worth this to you, Saul. I wrote you that 
I’ve promised.” 

“What does a promise matter if you’ve promised to 
wreck your life! Besides it is not too late to break it. 
Listen, Veronika. I have a plan. You wanted a plan 
all ready and I have it. I have money. I borrowed it. 
I have a hundred dollars. Come back with me to-night— 
come away with me now and to-morrow they could never 
part us again.” His voice grew thick and desperate. 
“Come, please, darling. Let me save you from this.” 

Against the planned orderliness of to-morrow, against 
the church in the morning, the wedding luncheon, the 
packed trousseau, the venture out of disorder into order- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 145 

liness, Saul’s plan struck like a jagged flash of lightning, 
beautiful and destructive. It roused in Veronika a sud¬ 
den desire to go with him, to try what she could do for 
him. There was little response in her to either of these 
men who had so pressed her to the deadening of response 
that it was almost a clear setting of plan against plan, 
of order against disorder, of that which was natural to 
the Pearses, strangeness and queerness and. erratic ac¬ 
tion—and Saul—against regularized living, the things she 
had lacked all her life. But in her hesitation Saul swept 
her into his arms. Never had he seemed to be so tall, 
so strong, so eager for her, and all the vague fear of 
men’s love that had been lurking in her for days rose 
again to the surface of her mind. She let him hold her 
close, but her very limpness told him that he was losing 
ground and as he tried to make her respond to the ardor 
that was in him he felt himself failing, for he released 
her. 

“You will come, won’t you, darling?” 

Even in the darkness he knew that she shook her head. 

“Does he love you as I do?” 

“I suppose not. But does it matter?” 

“You’ll find out that it matters,” he said brutally. 
“Veronika—before it’s too late?” 

“I can’t. I’m promised.” 

The life went out of his voice. 

“Then you want me to go?” 

“I want you all to go,” she cried. “I want to be left 
alone. I want you to stop harassing me. I don’t know 
whether I’m going to get married or not. But I want 
you to go—go—and stop bothering me. Leave me alone, 
I tell you. Leave me alone!” She was like a fury. It 
was impossible to touch her. And it may have been 


146 A Handmaid of the Lord 

that her inclusion of Stewart in her reaction encouraged 
Saul. But he hated to go. It was only her clenched 
hands, her tenseness that made him feel that he had 
better take her at her word. 

“Remember that I love you.” 

She did not answer that. 

“Can I see you to-morrow ?” 

“No,” she said flatly, “if I marry it’s because I want 
to. If I don’t marry him I won’t marry you. Now 
go—” 

He went. His quiver was empty at last. But before 
he went he kissed her and she felt his love swim through 
her—and out again— 

“I won’t come again unless you send for me.” 

Stewart found her, half an hour later, sitting on the 
grassed bank beside a sidewalk half a block from her 
home. 

“Want to be alone, dear?” he asked. “Isn’t it damp 
there ?” 

Of course he knew that something was wrong with 
her, but qualms on the brink of marriage were natural 
enough. Stewart would not object to them, she thought 
sardonically. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll come in after a while.” 

He too left her, and the minutes passed while she 
thought of all that she had embarked upon, and then as 
the time stretched out she grew immensely weary of 
sitting thinking and got stiffly to her feet and went home, 
through the back door, up to her room, which she locked. 
Every one knew that something was wrong with her. 
She could guess that the whole house teemed now with 
plans not to excite her or disturb her and that this aston¬ 
ishing group of people were in league to soothe her and 


A Handmaid of the Lord 147 

that things had indeed reached a strange and magnificent 
pitch of importance when Mrs. Pearse could be subdued 
by events. She contemplated her importance and listened 
vaguely to the talk below stairs and then turned off her 
light and lay staring out of the window for a long while, 
wondering where Saul was and if she had been wrong 
and thinking largely of the absurdity of the entire ar¬ 
rangement of marriage that kept nagging at you until 
you gave in to it. She thought of the chest of silver 
and at first it was important and a looming obstacle. 
If she didn’t marry Stewart that silver would have to be 
shipped back. It seemed a pity. Then the silver was 
only silver, tools with which people ate and no longer 
important at all in relation to the disposition of life. 

It might be just as well to have it over with. Perhaps 
even after you did marry you could preserve fragments 
of yourself, tuck them away. Could she preserve them 
better with Saul than with Stewart? Were they worth 
preserving? She rocked herself to sleep with philosophi¬ 
cal thought. 

3 

In the morning every one was still tentative and some¬ 
what furtive in their glances at her. She was up early. 
The ceremony had not been altered and was to take 
place at eleven unless she did something dramatic and 
unexpected. She flirted with that thought. 

“What would you all do if I refused to marry Stewart 
after all?” she asked Lily. 

“Well, you picked him. I don’t see why you need 
make a fool of yourself at the last moment.” 

Peggy said, “It’s scary at the last minute,” and 


148 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Veronika froze her friendliness with a look, but when 
her father came up and put his hand on her shoulder 
with a patting that was as near as he ever came to caress 
and said, “Good girl—steady, now, Ronny,” she felt that 
she was about to cry and had to take instant refuge in 
telling her mother that she didn’t think she’d get married 
that day. 

“Well, I don’t see why any woman does,” said Mrs. 
Pearse. “It’s the men that have all the fun—making 
women slaves, that’s all.” The remark was directed at 
her husband, who went out of the room quickly with 
a worried glance at Veronika. 

The florist’s boy came. An immense corsage for each 
girl, but Veronika’s was of orchids and of lilies of the 
valley—sumptuous. 

“They must have sent those from Duluth—that’s 
worth about fifty dollars,” said Lily, appraising it. 

And Saul had had a hundred dollars—incongruous and 
disturbing thought. Poor Saul—the pathos of his inade¬ 
quate hundred dollars. One should defend it somehow. 

“I am going up to have a bath,” announced Veronika. 

“Why bother, if the nuptials are off?” laughed Lily. 

Veronika found herself laughing too. 

“One can always use a bath,” she said, and went off 
in its direction. 

It was after all a mechanism which could only be 
stopped with over-great effort. One can get out of mar¬ 
riage, thought Veronika. She recalled that Catholics 
should not look on marriage like that. Marriage was 
a sacrament. So the priest had reiterated. They were all 
on their way to the sacrament shortly, for the first family 
sharing of one. Stewart’s car—her father’s washed-up 


A Handmaid of the Lord 149 

shabby one—the neighbors’ cars—parked outside the 
priest’s house. 

The priest’s living-room was ugly. Pictures on the 
wall attracted the eye direly—sacred subjects that were 
fearsome—pierced hearts—tragic faces of holy saints. 
There was a leather rocking-chair that creaked, and Mrs. 
Pearse sat in that, little jerks of her body, as if in re¬ 
sistance to the atmosphere of clerical holiness, bringing 
out the hidden squeaks. Veronika was dressed in her 
suit of soft blue crepe, bordered with summer fur, and 
did not feel natural, so completely well-dressed. Lily 
wore gold crepe, that had been not so long ago in Kurz- 
man’s window. Peggy was outstaring every one in rose 
color and there were a few others, a teacher or two whom 
Veronika liked, a few old neighbors, Ellie Lewis in a 
white organdie—the room filled. 

With astonishing lack of ceremony, Stewart appeared, 
looking hot. He was apprehensive of Veronika also. 
She knew that she was worrying every one and kept 
her pose of mystery, talking little and keeping her eyes 
on distance. 

Behind the priest were tiger lilies, quantities of them. 
Lily had collected them from the gardens of friends 
and sent them over and they were banded in a great ugly 
green vase. They should have been pretty. 

Father O’Rourke began. His tone seemed to reproach 
these two whom he must have under his wing when they 
were so unfamiliar with what his wing involved. He 
was immensely sober. The words were chill. A civil 
ceremony performed by a priest was all it amounted to, 
a heartless affair, indulged in because of one of Veronika’s 
necessities. 


150 A Handmaid of the Lord 

The priest asked if she “took this man” and at the 
moment it never occurred to her to hesitate. She was 
anxious to make things less stultified and said that she 
would—rather hurriedly, almost eagerly. So it was over 
and they signed their names to some more papers and 
in a book and people began to kiss her for no apparent 
reason. Stewart apparently had such an impulse and 
she drew away, but no one minded that, for after all 
the thing was over and they were married. The priest 
smiled at them finally and was dignifiedly hearty in hop¬ 
ing that their wedded life would bring them happiness 
and the grace of God. 

In a little gust of gayety they all went back from the 
church to the Pearse house for lunch, and Veronika 
wanted to help get lunch and for once was not permitted, 
though Lily gave her a droll look as if appreciating the 
humor of this sudden elevation of Veronika above man¬ 
ual labor. 

The day was growing hotter and hotter. The dining¬ 
room shades did their best to keep out the sun. The 
whole business was hot and tawdry and not at all im¬ 
portant according to Veronika’s shift of mind. She was 
very anxious to either get in the kitchen or out in the 
hammock and instead had to sit in the parlor with 
Stewart beside her, both of them in discomfort carrying 
out some one’s idea. Marriage-—that they made such a 
fuss about—was nothing at all 


THE SECOND BOOK 




THE SECOND BOOK 

CHAPTER I 

'VT’ET days had merged into nights and nights slipped 
back into days through only a brief cycle before it 
seemed to Veronika that nothing but marriage had ever 
happened to her and that nothing else was of consequence 
in the world. In her hands she held the key to the 
universe and in her mind light had been flooded on dozens 
of obscurities and wonderments. Nothing was as she 
had thought it would be, and yet everything was so actual 
that clearly it could be devised in no other fashion. 

Stewart was astonishingly real. He had been suppliant 
so long that she had come to think of him as at the 
disposal of her mood. The feeling of personal power 
which had grown in her during these months of court¬ 
ship by Saul and Stewart was still with her, deepened, 
sharpened, explained. Yet it was personal power which 
knowledge made timorous sometimes and sometimes apol¬ 
ogetic and sometimes marvelously swept by generosities. 

It was melancholy and it was sweet. The reasons for 
everything were prey to the languor which kept drifting 
over her and which Stewart encouraged. He wanted 
her mind cloudless and her body relaxed, and though 
at first her mind tugged on at those responsibilities left 
behind in Valhalla it was with an increasingly faint tug. 
She could not even remember exactly what Stewart had 
seemed to her before her marriage. He had waxed in 
importance now, yet not so much as Stewart as in the 
153 


154 A Handmaid of the Lord 

role of husband which seemed to her a very mighty 
and splendid part to play. Formerly she had thought 
of marriage with the slight sense of controversy which 
pervaded her generation. The controversy was very re¬ 
mote now. She was tasting with her emotions and not 
with her mind. 

Wedding trips were altogether holy. She shuddered 
away from the vulgarization of them in popular thought 
and comment. It seemed so necessary, so reasonable 
that a man and a woman should depart together and 
find intimacy silently and secretly, in the anonymity of 
railroad trains flying through darkness, in the soft luxury 
of strange hotels and inns. She liked the trains best. 
Isolation in the midst of unnamed and unknown com¬ 
panionship as they sped along through darkness or 
through strange places kept romance steadily aflame, and 
the proportions of adventure large as Veronika must 
have them to be satisfied. Those first weeks of marriage 
did much to slake her thirst for the dignities of living. 
In Valhalla there had been the eternal necessary pretenses 
that she might not fall short of the respect she demanded 
of herself. But in this new life were outward symbols 
of inward grace. Ease and the first soft, quieting 
touches of luxury were there. She savored these things 
not in the least greedily, but deeply and almost solemnly, 
as if she was bringing herself homage. 

Languor—and Stewart striding in and out of its 
period of suspension, bracing it. She lived through that 
first month in exquisite simplicity of mind and Stewart 
worshiped her after his first fear, worshiped her gen¬ 
erosities and the diffident latent sweetness that rose to the 
surface of her actions. They felt that they had discov¬ 
ered the world, which was as it should have been. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 155 

Veronika was very beautiful. She instinctively discov¬ 
ered the beauty of line and gesture, and offered it to her 
husband. She was relaxed, not struggling against the 
slight sadness which enveloped her now and then, as it 
did even Stewart. He always returned to exuberance, 
but now and then she saw the ache hidden deep in his 
eyes as he looked at her and knew that it was because he 
too was finding that he had been given only finite mo¬ 
ments, finite motions to express an infinite desire. And 
sometimes when he would look closely at her he would 
place his hand over her eyes as if he could not quite bear 
the revelation of whatever depth of relationship he saw 
there. Such simple things—a white arm stretched along 
a pillow—to set the balance of the universe. And in the 
day one could rest brooding over the wonder of night 
that could so exalt and change the spirit, and make the 
body so mystical a wonder. 

So Veronika found what human love was and ex¬ 
panded in its rare beauty, and felt very princess-like and 
fine as she walked down the soft thick padded corridors 
of hotels or sat opposite Stewart in luxurious dining¬ 
rooms and tried on her new negligees and had joy in 
keeping her trunk in perfect order and vaguely scented. 
Stewart was to the rest of the world a nice looking young 
fellow enough, but to Veronika he was unique in being 
her link of connection with so much that was hidden in 
a dark sweet world that ran under the surface of food 
and drink and living. It was delicious to think of that 
current of love flowing under the lives of all these people 
whom she met and saw, to feel that at last she knew why 
things were as they were, why men sought women and 
poets wrote verses. Once in a while she plucked her 
mind resolutely away from things which intruded in it— 


156 A Handmaid of the Lord 

the question of her mother and father (they must have 
been lovers at some inconceivably remote time), the fact 
of the barter and sale of relations between men and 
women. Such unpleasant thoughts could not be quite 
barred, for Veronika could not bring naivete to her mar¬ 
riage though she brought it beauty. But the intrusions 
were transient. She was in a fine high mood which lent 
dignity and color to everything and a marvel of power 
to herself. 

Their wedding trip, which was extended, included 
Westover and held a promise of Europe, though that was 
still to be decided by Stewart’s vague “business interests.” 
Westover came first. There Veronika found everything 
changed and shrunken after two weeks of hotel living, of 
meeting Stewart’s friends here and there and her own 
college friends. In so short a time certain pompous¬ 
nesses of living had become available to her and she had 
taken on their color so that the house of her grandfather 
was a flat-faced wooden building, large and ugly. The 
seams in the old cherry in the dining-room had split— 
had they been split for years ?—and madras curtains hung 
without beauty or grace at the windows. The old man 
still sat by the table in the back parlor, definably older, 
pinched by rheumatism, clinging to his life-line into im¬ 
mortality. 

At the Army Post thin-faced young officers dawdled 
about, a new group who looked for the most part ex¬ 
tremely callow, and the garrison itself was made up of 
colored soldiers. But the worst part was Michael’s house. 
On the parlor floor the Brussels rug was worn to its 
cords and on the walls were pictures of the more lurid 
conceptions of religious doctrines. With Michael gone 


A Handmaid of the Lord 157 

one noticed these things. Looking back, Veronika sup¬ 
posed that he had never cared whether they were there 
or not. Worse—Aloysius was shrunken in spirit. He 
sat at a dining-room window all day long and waited for 
death, like old Mr. Pearse, but not so fittingly. Death’s 
approach had nagged his spirit thin. He had not been 
able to hold to that gallant and humorous view of his hump 
and his life. Veronika found him praying and reading 
inconsequent religious books brought in by simple- 
minded relatives. She was sickened and sickened again; 
by her own distress. For if reason ran straight and re¬ 
ligion was indeed divine she should think it eminently 
proper to find Aloysius with his beads on the arm of his 
chair and his discarded book—“Little Jewels of Thought 
on the Life to Come.” But for Aloysius ! 

It was hard to ask him about Michael. She guessed 
at Michael’s decline. 

Michael was living in Albany and practicing law. A 
glimmer of the old irony came into Aloysius’ eyes. 

“The blonde got fat,” he said. “I think Mick must 
hate her. She was here with him once. No love lost— 
. no love lost—” 

“Does he have to stick to that?” cried Veronika re- 
belliously. 

“Doesn’t he ?” 

“It’s hideous.” 

“Few things are perfect,” said Aloysius sententiously. 

“That’s a, lazy way to lie down under trouble. Why 
doesn’t he make a fresh start?” 

“Mick? Well, I guess he’s a bit fat, too. The blonde 
stripped him of romance, Ronny, and he’s conscious of 
that.” 


158 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Veronika shuddered. 

“You are living in romance now, Ronny,” Aloysius 
went on. 

“In reality.” 

“In glamour.” The book slipped from the arm of 
Aloysius’ chair and Veronika let it lie, a sprawling bundle 
of sentiment. “In glamour,” repeated the cripple, “and 
you’ll have to come to reality just like the rest of us. 
Reality—humps—blondes getting fat—plots in grave¬ 
yards waiting for you under a Celtic cross—a vale of 
tears, Veronika, that’s what they say, tears and slop, 
that’s what it is.” 

She closed her eyes. The knowledge that she had only 
to move away from this depression to get back into her 
own bright circle of clean quick life, enriched by love, 
seemed immeasurably cruel to Aloysius. Aloysius’ mother 
came in, carrying an eggnog on a battered silver tray. 
She respected Veronika immensely since Veronika had 
married a Royden. 

They all did. All Veronika’s relatives were glad that 
she had stepped into that higher social fold signified 
by the Roydens and the Royden name. The Roydens 
had lived in Westover for a hundred years and there was 
now left Mrs. Royden, strongly conscious of that hun¬ 
dred years and continually and tiresomely dwelling upon 
it. She lived in a square, stone house and her life had 
ceased to matter to any one, thought Veronika. Mrs. 
Royden, elder, was harassed by the responsibilities of her 
living, by the calendaring of her small responsibilities. 
No fusing of life into philosophy had come her way with 
age. She remained a bickerer with small events. The 
sisters, who had brought their husbands comfortable com¬ 
petence, and made occasional trips to New York and even 


A Handmaid of the Lord 159 


to Europe, had pleasant houses and pleasant children. 
When they introduced Veronika they accented her college 
education until Veronika felt it must be her only strong 
point with them. That not because it meant erudition, 
but it was a minor symbol of gentility and took her out 
of the class of the common. They were likable, but hav¬ 
ing once become familiarly Kate and Jessamine, having 
been attained, they too shrank like everything else in the 
old sleepy city. Only Stewart retained importance. Ver¬ 
onika listened to the endless talk of her sisters-in-law, of 
their good connections and their small relationships to 
things and events of importance. Such a one was the 
cousin of the secretary of the navy. There had been a 
dinner for her at Colonel Stout’s last week. Jessamine 
was there. Kate, slightly lower in the social plane be¬ 
cause her husband was a business and not a professional 
man, had not attended. In the sister’s eyes the thing 
seemed immense. 

What Veronika felt throughout Westover, with all the 
relatives and connections, with the little city itself snug¬ 
gled by the river in its habitudes, was the same. It was 
its intense preoccupation with small events, especially its 
preoccupation with itself. It had come to full stop in 
certain satisfactions. Unlike Valhalla it was not always 
molding itself on cities of large scope and size. It was 
a source, a historical site, and was at ease, if not with 
smugness, at least with contentment. 

All this mattered because there was much family 
talk of where Stewart and Veronika were to live, and 
Veronika knew that she did not want to live in West- 
over and take the second floor of the Roy den house and 
look out on Grove Park, with its aged elms, for long 
periods of her life. Stewart until his marriage had been 


160 A Handmaid of the Lord 


living intermittently in Westover and New York, but his 
New York residence was only a hotel room. 

Another thing that seemed to shrink on close approach 
was the Roy den fortune. There was money, to be sure— 
a grand lot in the eyes of old Westover, which had al¬ 
ways considered the Royden family rich. It had been a 
substantial heritage for the girls when they had come 
of age and Stewart had had his share. The widow had 
her old stone house. But the Roydens counted the cost 
of things often, even more than Veronika had been accus¬ 
tomed to do. Living had changed and the fortunes made 
in 1890 were only competences in 1912. Stewart, she 
found, if he were to be the capitalist she had assumed 
him to be, must increase his fortune. The Valhalla in¬ 
terests were important and she felt an odd sense of pride 
in finding that out. It was not too easy to find out from 
her husband the limits and exactitudes'of the income they 
would share, and she was shy about pressing the point 
because he had brought her greater luxury than she had 
ever known. He explained some phase to her and put 
her off with a caress or a cheque. She liked that gesture 
of affluence and the blindfolded way of being paid for as 
only those who have lacked sufficient financial protection 
can like it. But it often seemed to her that Stewart spent 
money badly, and she already had needs which she was 
forced to satisfy in the Westover shops, using Royden 
credit, opening new accounts in her new name. She kept 
wishing that she had enough money to send home to Lily, 
so. that Lily could thoroughly replenish her wardrobe be¬ 
fore she went to New York. But she did not handle 
much money and certain vague plans for the aid of her 
family's distresses or discomforts were being constantly 
postponed. She had found that Stewart was a little im- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 161 

patient about the bond between her and her family. 
Never unkind, but impatient. 

“Don’t bother about them, darling,” he said to her one 
night, when he found her reading a letter from Lily with 
a rather downcast face, “it’s just that I wanted to get you 
away from. I want you to let them lead their own lives 
and then to let you and me lead ours.” 

“Of course. Lily is going back to New York, she says. 
I think from what Aunt Kate said yesterday that she will 
help her. Lily’s all right. It’s Tom. Tom is still just 
hanging around.” 

“Tom always will hang around more or less.” 

Veronika looked up at her husband sharply. He was 
lighting a cigarette—he smoked dozens daily and the 
gesture was already almost too familiar. Clearly his re¬ 
mark was not meant to wound her. It was casual. 

“It’s that girl,” she said. “Tom has no end of ability 
and personality. Every one’s always been crazy about 
him.” 

“That won’t help him any,” said Stewart. 

“Don’t you like Tom?” 

“Of course I do. I like him. I like Lily. But I 
didn’t marry them, Veronika. I married you. And 
while we’re on the point I’m glad to get you away from 
them. You’re much more of a person—not nearly so 
nervous or continually distressed when you aren’t listen¬ 
ing to family troubles all the time. I’ll be all the trouble 
you want, Ronny,” he finished jocosely. She said noth¬ 
ing more. But her mind drifted back to Valhalla. She 
had not severed Valhalla after all. It was strange that 
her first sense of entity had come through this. She had 
been living in Stewart deeply, violently. She supposed 
that she had merged her life with his completely. Yet, 


162 A Handmaid of the Lord 

at the challenge, she was again Veronika Pearse of Val¬ 
halla and Valhalla responsibilities were again her own. 

She wrote a long letter to Lily that night and felt re¬ 
freshed by it. She wrote as if she were talking about 
family plans and responsibilities. When Stewart, who 
had been out for a few hours playing bridge at the Coun¬ 
try Club, entered the big cool high-ceilinged room which 
they shared in the Royden house he found her finishing 
her letter and watched her as she sealed it. There was 
a speculative look in his eyes as he looked down at her 
and read the address on the envelope lying beside 
her. 

"You’re up late, dear,” he said. 

"Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” 

He was smoking again—contemplatively. 

"I think I’ll take you abroad, Ronny.” 

"Truly? It isn’t just a plan? But it would cost too 
much, Stewart. Oh, I’m sure it would.” 

"Leave the money part to me.” 

"That’s what’s hardest.” 

"What is?” 

"Just leaving it to you. I feel like such a useless 
thing.” 

She found it impossible to go further and tell him that 
while she felt the checks here and there on their expendi¬ 
ture, while she was continually conscious that there 
wasn’t a lot of money, she couldn’t help feeling that he 
was foolish about it. That if they didn’t spend so much 
on this luxury it would be easier to ask him for the 
money for the next necessity. But she could not mar the 
delicacy of their relationship by beginning to pull in dis¬ 
cussions of money. It made it seem as if she wasn’t satis¬ 
fied, or as if she wasn’t fully cognizant that she was bet- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 163 

ter taken care of than she had ever been in all her life 
before. 

“I never spent money,” said Stewart, “on anything that 
I enjoyed as much as you.” The flavor of his talk nearly 
always gave her pleasure, his masculinity, with its com¬ 
mon little outcroppings, things she had always heard of 
as subjects for jest, the rather ordinary jokes, the some¬ 
what banal compliments, ordinary and conventional as a 
man’s clothes, but not changing his appearance or per¬ 
sonality. She slid her arm along the desk toward him. 
That was all she had to do. That was the wouder of it. 
From that half-gesture of affection she could indicate 
that there was a world of gratitude, of love, happiness in 
her, and that it all came from him and went back to him. 
His eyes rested on her arm and they explained tenderness. 
Strange. With her eyes closed it was often hard to vis¬ 
ualize him. Yet with them closed as they were now she 
knew that there stood beside her the person through whom 
she was to see life and who was giving her possibility of 
knowing it. 

“Dear Stewart,” she gave him simply, as an answer to 
everything. 

“Don’t spend all your time worrying about Valhalla, 
sweetest,” he warned her; “there are things you can’t 
alter. Let it all slip out of your life and just be happy 
with me now. That’s the thing you ought to do.” 

Somewhere in the house a door creaked—some one, 
maid or mistress, went about her business leaving Ver¬ 
onika and Stewart to even more perfect isolation. Pri¬ 
vacy was still delight to them. Each time any little inci¬ 
dent like this twanged the cord of it they were alert with 
response. 

Stewart was kneeling beside her. 


164 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Ronny, darling, each day it seems more impossible 
that I have you.” 

She laid her hand on his cheek softly and let the flame 
burn, kindling itself against her passivity. Power was 
strong in her. A wave of it bore her to its crest. 


CHAPTER II 


i 

T>EYOND Queen’s Hall and just off the affluence of 
Portland Place lay a small street, one of the London 
streets that seemed to Veronika to be so delightfully incon¬ 
sequent, as if tucked in long ago for some now forgotten 
purpose. It revealed nothing of itself of course to the 
American travelers. They knew Cavendish Chambers 
and that was all, and indeed of Cavendish Chambers only 
that door to the right on the first floor. 

It was the town flat of Edward Mavory. Mavory, just 
off to the war, had looked Stewart up on one of his leaves 
which had fortunately almost coincided with their ar¬ 
rival. He and Stewart had been classmates for a year 
in Yale. Mavory was glad, he said, to rent the flat. 
When he got leaves he would be in Surrey with his 
mother most of the time anyway and it would be an eco¬ 
nomic convenience to have the flat sublet for the two 
or three months the Roydens proposed to stay. 

Mavory was a tall Englishman on whom Veronika 
made singularly little impression. He was extremely 
handsome, with dark hair and red cheeks, but Veronika 
secretly felt that there was an obvious stupidity about his 
looks as well as about his manner. He and Stewart 
talked endlessly of extremely small incidents which had 
marked their mutual college careers or of war probabili¬ 
ties. Now and then Veronika wanted to dash a remark 
into the stream of talk between them, but she was halted 
165 


166 A Handmaid of the Lord 

by feeling that it would be out of tune. She wanted to 
express her horror of war and yet that wasn’t at all the 
way the men were looking at it. Her attitude came back 
to her from such brief flights as a complex of amateur¬ 
ishness and sentimentality reflected from the practical 
outlook of the men. So usually she held her peace when 
they were with Mavory and had a sense that Mavory 
was extremely bored with her and that he dashed off to 
brighter rendezvous after they had dined together or 
been to a theater. Once indeed Stewart went with him. 
He said that he would ride down with Mavory to post 
some of Veronika’s letters and come back later. 

She had heard the whir of their departing taxi and set 
about re-ordering her (Mavory’s) living-room before she 
went to bed. She liked Mavory’s rooms. They were 
not the reflection of Mavory’s taste. Originally the rooms 
had been done by an artist who had been glad to get rid 
of the “lot” to Mavory at a sacrifice. The artist had the 
room before Mavory and he had found apparently that 
with the approach of war interest in art had slackened 
and left him poverty-ridden. He had gone—yet some¬ 
how the idea of him remained in the dull rose Chinese rug 
—the black lacquer tables. 

Veronika straightened the rooms with her old Val¬ 
halla touch of order and sat down before the fire, the 
miserable but consecutive fire of an English living-room. 
Heavy rose tapestry curtains stirred at the long windows 
which opened into the tiniest of iron balconies. It was 
very luxurious and very still, the kind of scene that Ver¬ 
onika loved to savor, conscious of her part in it, con¬ 
scious that this well being and luxury were hers. 

She had meant to go to bed, but when an hour had 
passed and Stewart was not back she lost her taste for 


A Handmaid of the Lord 167 

it. She was too awake, too conscious of his absence, 
wondering if she should not be concerned by it. 

After all, she thought, he’s no child. He’s an able- 
bodied man, and ought to be able to get back here. 

The hours crept on. It was long past midnight. She 
was shut off from everything in Mavory’s flat. Across 
the hall in the flat which also fronted on the first floor 
were people doubtless—or a person. The flats were bach¬ 
elor flats and only the war had made the concession pos¬ 
sible which allowed Veronika to live there. Upstairs the 
gray, stage-like gentleman, whom Veronika had seen on 
the stairs, might be stirring. But these people were noth¬ 
ing to her, who were physically closest. Servants below 
stairs, servants whom she knew were alternately puzzled 
and amused at her Americanisms. Somewhere, outside 
in the vastness of London, was Stewart, the only one 
among all the millions of people who found her import¬ 
ant. He was held to her by the tie of love, of marriage. 
Suddenly these ties seemed slight and as it occurred to 
her that they were fragile, she found herself insisting 
upon them violently, as important, as hers by right, as in¬ 
destructible. 

Why did Stewart leave her alone like this? 

The answer came cruelly when Stewart came in at 
three o’clock, piloted upstairs by a weary taxi-driver, ex¬ 
tremely drunk. 

She shrank away from his deadened attempts to greet 
her, to offer some blurred explanation and was only more 
outraged when he went to the bedroom and obviously 
fell instantly asleep. She could hear his heavy labored 
breathing through the two doors which separated them 
and it drove her to a fury of anger. The loneliness which 
an hour ago had seemed so frighteningly mysterious was 


168 A Handmaid of the Lord 

a hundred times more hideous now, a hundred times more 
fearful. 

Where had he been? What had he been doing? 

She assaulted the heavens with her hysteria, her tan¬ 
trum of grievance and pain. All her new spun knowledge 
of men, all her fine woven garment of their relations was 
dragged in mud. Stewart was sleeping off his debauch. 
This was what she might expect, she thought. This was 
what men did to women, chained them and then left them 
on the chain while they ran away. Men did as they 
pleased. They had their own good time— 

She was standing before the mantel, her eyes glaring 
angrily into those coals which had invited reflection only 
three hours ago. A sudden motion of her arm, a gesture 
of rage and there was the tinkle of glass on the hearth. 
A high-ball glass left on the mantel had fallen and broken. 
The sound woke in her an unforgettable memory, a mem¬ 
ory of glass breaking on the back stairs in Valhalla in 
shattered fragments. She turned to look in the mirror, 
irresistibly. There was her mother looking out of her 
eyes, her mother’s anger, her mother’s rages, her moth¬ 
er’s fury against men. The likeness struck Veronika like 
a blow. She sat down in the nearest chair, shrinking 
sobbing. 

In the next room Stewart snored. If she could have 
gone to him and talked it out it would have been easy 
In her ignorance she tried that. She opened the bed¬ 
room door and switched on the softest light. 

“Stewart,” she said softly. 

She could not wake him. When he responded at last it 
was to hold out his arm for her—a gesture of love, ac¬ 
companied by a sleep-fuddled “darling.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 169 

Yet somehow, warned by that likeness which had 
spoken to her in the mirror, warned that there were worse 
things than she had sounded, Veronika managed to lie 
down in her own bed and pull off the light. Darkness 
snuffed out the tiny drama. The amazing lesson to Ver¬ 
onika was that she slept. 


2 

When she awakened it was to a sensation that things 
were wrong, which instantly beclouded her first clearness. 
She waited for a moment for events to come back to her, 
but it was rather the mood that came back. This, the 
familiar Valhalla awakening, the wakening after battle, 
had traced her across the ocean and found her here in 
London in a strange room with thick gray mist sifting 
through the open windows. She rose and pushed them 
down, then stood looking at Stewart, still asleep. The 
horror was gone this morning, only the ache remained 
that there had been horror. She was sorry for Stewart, 
even as she puzzled. What did she know about men— 
except that they were driven? Poor Stewart—who had 
been good to her, who had been her lover and had given 
her the best of all the things she had ever had ? It was 
against or perhaps beyond reason that she found herself 
kneeling beside him, his head against her hand. This 
time he wakened and struggled back through his own 
paths of memory. This time his endearment was more 
than sub-conscious. 

But of course it wasn’t the end of it. The generosity 
of her acceptance of him was not perfect as it should 
have been to have carried before it the suspicion, the 


170 A Handmaid of the Lord 

tracks of disloyalty, the question and, most of all, the fear 
of an unknown thing repeating itself. 

She was beginning to discover what every married 
woman must discover, that the commonplaces of marriage 
exist because they are truly commonplace and inevitably 
occurrent. She kept trying to keep away from little trod¬ 
den paths of married habit, but it was not so easy, even 
in London, even though she had put thousands of miles 
between her and familiar things that might be expected 
to wear quickly into grooves. 

Gradually from becoming a mist, Stewart's business 
was taking on definite outlines. She knew now what he 
was about. There was a steel company in New York 
which was interested in Stewart's Valhalla ore holdings. 
Stewart had ideas about finding a market for the steel 
abroad and of taking a small part of the capital stock in 
the steel company himself. 

Out of this plan was to come food and raiment and 
shelter and provision for the future. Veronika won¬ 
dered often how they could exist so easily, with such 
leisured hours. 

“But you surely ought to get started, Stewart. It's 
ten o'clock,” she would say, with the sure instinct of the 
woman sending forth the breadwinner. 

“Nothing starts in London before noon,” he would 
laugh, and finish his cigar amid a welter of newspapers. 
There would be an interlude of affection. Sometimes 
Stewart found it hard to leave his wife even for a little 
while, and, as far as Veronika could discover, his reluc¬ 
tance or ease had nothing to do with her mood or any 
phase of her. It was in Stewart himself that the source 
of his moods lay. 

She had found, too, that he had rich days and poor 


A Handmaid of the Lord 171 


days, and that was confusing. There was the day on 
which he wanted her to buy a platinum wrist watch in 
Bond Street and she had to drag him away on a plea of 
further reflection. That was succeeded only the next 
week by the day on which he worried about the price they 
were paying for Mavory’s apartment. Subtly that sense 
of complete moneyed well-being which had wrapped itself 
around Veronika during the early days of her marriage 
began to disintegrate. It wasn’t that she spent any less 
money. She spent a great deal. But the freedom to 
spend it, the sense of being untrammeled was not there. 

The late autumn came—a different autumn from any 
she had ever known. There had been the early chills of 
Valhalla, the omnipresent sense of furnaces, the stripping 
of trees by chill, professional winds—there had been the 
mellow, reddening falls in Westover, laden with a damp, 
sweet sense of ripening fruit. Here in London the sense 
of season came through the calendar and through the 
more frequent dampness and steadiness of mist. 

Veronika had too little to do. She was aware of war, 
but it was an alien war, and one borne with easy optimism 
by all the British whom she met, still in their first flush 
of surety. It was—scenic. Scenic in the music halls 
where chorus girl beauties were dressed in the costumes 
of the Allied nations and the orchestras played the na¬ 
tional airs of the Allies (and no one was perfectly sure 
which tune was which until they came to the Marseillaise 
and God Save the King). A pictorial war so far with a 
sense of something salacious running through it—these 
stories of rapes and ravages, of Belgian outrages. Ver¬ 
onika tried to help refugees with Belgian relief work. 
An enthusiastic Englishwoman led her into it, one whom 
she had met through a business connection of Stewart’s. 


172 A Handmaid of the Lord 

It was discouraging to find that the English did not like 
the Belgians, and that all there was to do in fact was a 
kind of badly organized Associated Charity work sup¬ 
ported on her part at least by no loftiness of patriotism. 

The truest things that came out of the war came inci¬ 
dentally. She was walking along Piccadilly one day when 
a regiment of young soldiers passed her, fresh no doubt, 
to judge from their rosy faces, their boyishness, their 
spick and span uniforms, from some model training camp 
in England. Soldiers of no experience. Later that same 
morning she met some others and the contrast bewildered 
her. These later ones were brown-skinned—they 
slouched as they walked—their file was irregular—their 
clothes had no air of newness. 

‘‘Who are they?” she asked a woman standing beside 
her, “soldiers?” 

“It's a regiment back from India on the way to the 
front, Miss—” 

These soldiers of India, walking, not strutting, these 
veterans told Veronika more by their weather-beaten look 
than she could ever have guessed of the reality of long 
continued war, of the fact of it when the comic opera 
phase, the martial song noise, the civilian accompaniment 
was knocked out of it. She did not forget them, nor the 
boys in their soldier suits who would come to look like 
these campaigners. 

Of course the weeks were punctuated by high dramatic 
moments. The Germans approaching, driven back, the 
occupation of a new" town, the information that things 
had reached a climax followed by the story that all 
information given out in England was rubbish. Sub¬ 
marines, airplanes—a death list still glorious and not be¬ 
ginning to be nationally sickening—all pictorial. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 173 

Along with it ran the very definite knowledge that out 
of this state of affairs Stewart had hopes of making 
money for himself and for her. 

It was like a story she was reading on her wedding 
trip, something very interesting, but which at another 
time might have been more interesting. Because the 
thing that sucked everything else into its own surface 
like blotting paper was living with Stewart. 

She would have liked to swim in isolation, but she dis¬ 
covered something about that, too. Stewart wanted her 
to himself violently, but not continuously. There were 
times when he wanted to show her off, when he was defi¬ 
nitely anxious for company. Veronika had never 
doubted in her dreams that when she had opportunities to 
wear beautiful clothes and meet people of distinction she 
would be thoroughly equal to the occasions which came. 
At that point the dreams always were suffused in success. 
Now when these chances and occasions came she was not 
always successful. As with Mavory, she did not always 
attract people. Even as she began to get again the old 
habits of money responsibility, so again she began to 
have the feeling of social failure that came over her at 
the old Post dances in Westover when she looked at the 
graces of Mary Tracy. There were graceful women here 
too and now there was Stewart for whom she especially 
wanted to match them. 

They went to a house party in Hants, at the house 
of a man with whom Stewart had some business rela¬ 
tions. It was delightful for the first afternoon. Like all 
Americans Veronika delighted in the sense of being in 
the midst of an English novel. It was a large house with 
many rooms, with gardens about it still not quite devoid 
of bloom (she exulted in the thought and sight of gar- 


174 A Handmaid of the Lord 

dens in a plural, remembering the sweet-pea trellis and 
the nasturtium and geranium plots of Valhalla). In the 
room which she shared with her husband there was a 
fur rug, snowy white, beside the great bed, and the cover¬ 
let was of rose satin. 

"Just to be in a place like this does things to you, 
doesn't it? It makes you more important for always," 
said Veronika, standing at the window and looking out at 
the early November sunset. 

Stewart, who was most lover-like that day and had 
adored her all the way in the train, answered fittingly— 

‘‘As you are the only important thing in the world 
anyhow—" and took her in his arms. 

It was sweet and confident to dress. She wore brown 
velvet for dinner and a pair of bronze slippers. It was 
a costume which always became her and she was so sure 
of that that it sustained her until they were half through 
dinner. Then her mind began to drift. At first she had 
liked watching these men and women enjoying themselves 
together. The man beside her, a thickening middle-aged 
man, asking her something about America's entrance into 
the war. She made some statement, true enough, un¬ 
gallant, definitely pacifist. There came a kind of hush 
and she realized it was not what she ought to have said. 
But she could not flex. She felt again the young, rather 
gauche girl, “putting her foot into it." The moment 
passed, but the man beside her was bored. That was 
clear. He gave her no more opportunities. She tried to 
talk to him brightly. Suddenly she became aware that a 
woman across the table was regarding her with amuse¬ 
ment. Mrs. Roper was the woman’s name. She was a 
woman with a beautiful neck and arms which somehow 
one thought of instantly. Veronika tried to manage a 


A Handmaid of the Lord 175 

look of hauteur and suspected that she only showed cross¬ 
ness. She looked at Stewart, but Stewart was talking 
to his own partner, one of the golden-looking English¬ 
women who looked well in the evening. Every one ex¬ 
cept Veronika seemed to her to be already heady with 
wine. She had very great ignorance of and suspicions of 
wines. The tradition that “Hot Stuff,” a few drops of 
brandy in hot water, taken as a stimulant, was the only 
moral drink clung, an indestructible Valhalla tradition. 
But she saw these other women seem to soften in the re¬ 
gard of the men, to take on a subtle lusciousness that left 
her gauche and angular. The woman to whom Stewart 
was talking was the wife of an officer at the front. It 
was not right, thought Veronika with a virtue sprung 
from a source which she did not stop to analyze, for a 
woman to amuse herself so gayly with another man while 
her husband was lying suffering in a trench. 

Squabs were served. She hated squabs, all small birds 
that you had to carve yourself. They were too small to be 
reasonable. She tried to be deft, in mortal fear that the 
bird would slip from her plate on the cloth. There were 
so many things one had to be brought up to, she thought 
distressfully. Even when you are college bred and of 
good taste, that does not help you with squabs. Between 
comedy people, eating with their knives, whom you could 
make fun of, and epicures delicately trained was that 
great class of people who never had been served from 
the side, but always from the platter, who had difficulty 
in following the silent suggestions of trained servants. 
It didn’t matter, didn’t affect the real things of life, she 
whispered to her mind. But it did! Until manners 
slipped from one unconsciously, until one was bred per¬ 
fectly, there was no perfection of body and soul. There 


176 A Handmaid of the Lord 

were freckles on her forearm. The woman to whom 
Stewart was talking didn’t have freckles. 

Lily could have managed all this. 

“So you don’t think your president feels inclined to 
come in,” said the man heavily. 

“We all think the Allies are right, but does that justify 
war ?” she answered. 

The man wiped his mustaches easily, comfortably. A 
bundle of bones lay on his plate, looking different from 
Veronika’s hacked squab. She reflected that he had eaten 
many a bird successfully. One could tell. Eaten squab 
and talked to beautiful women. 

There was so much to eat and so highly flavored. 

After dinner it was very little better. When she was 
through correcting impressions the women had of spaces 
and customs of the United States, the men were with 
them again. Stewart was having such a good time. 
Why couldn’t she help him by having one herself ? An¬ 
other man tried to talk to her, a middle-aged officer, lean 
and immaculately uniformed. At first he seemed to like 
her better than her red-faced partner. Perhaps brown¬ 
skinned, undeveloped young married women pleased him. 
She tried—so that Stewart might see—to prove attrac- 
tiveness. 

I was in the States a couple of years ago.” 

“You were? Did you like us?” She made an at¬ 
tempt at archness. The sudden coquetry sat badly on 
her, did not fit somehow. Dismally she felt utter lack of 
the quality which attracted and held men. For she was 
keen and as the man gave her flat platitudes she felt her 
failure quickly. 

They played bridge and some of the people went out 
doors. It was the sort of scene she had always wanted 


A Handmaid of the Lord 177 

to be a part of, the kind of scene of which she had read—- 
French doors, bridge tables set up by servants. Some 
one spoke of her to Stewart as “your nice little wife. ,, 
She felt angry, aggrieved, and futilely unable to prove 
distinction. 

And her bridge game was bad. It was clear that the 
lady with the yellow hair liked Stewart. He was at his 
best, a flavor of wine and tobacco around him that was 
very masculine, an ease, a lack of pretense, handsome 
in black and white—she had never noticed quite how 
well Stewart wore dinner clothes. With her mind on 
these things she fumbled her bridge. She wasn’t even 
clever. 

It came to an end. She and Stewart were in their bed¬ 
room again, the room which had so delighted her. Now 
it did not. She wanted to get back to some place where 
possession was hers and she could revive her dignity and 
power. 

“That’s an awfully nice dress, darling,” said Stewart, 
“but there’s something about that shoulder that isn’t quite 
right. It doesn’t fit well—that shoulder strap.” 

She pulled away from him. He shouldn’t have his 
mind on shoulder straps. Wasn’t the world at war? Be¬ 
sides it was simply that she had never learned how to 
manage her under things well when she wore evening 
dresses. 

“I see nothing wrong with it,” she said coldly. “Most 
of these women were like all Englishwomen, badly 
dressed and over-dressed. That Mrs. Ivers you concen¬ 
trated on seemed to me especially so.” 

Stewart grinned. 

“She’s a lot of fun—” 

“Fine time to be having fun, with your husband on a 


178 A Handmaid of the Lord 

battlefield. Would you like me to carry on that way if 
you were fighting for your country ?" 

‘‘You sound like a Fourth of July speech in Valhalla/' 
said Stewart, lightly. 

“Valhalla's all right, Stewart." 

For the first time he seemed to recognize her awry 
temper. 

“What's the trouble, dear?" 

“Nothing—nothing. I just don’t approve of all this 
riotousness when the world is at war. Do you?" 

He went through that business of cigarette lighting 
which was to so madden her later. 

“I don’t know. I have always found that when people 
criticize the good times other people are having there’s 
something like a basis of jealousy," he said casually. 

Veronika choked. It was cruel to be as keen as that. 
Stewart could be keen and cruel too. She was discover¬ 
ing that, as the days slipped along. 

I really can’t imagine being jealous of such a person, 
if that s what you imply, Stewart. My respect for you 
is rather too high to imagine you attracted by a dyed 
blonde." 

“Woman's inhumanity to woman," said Stewart. 

There rose again in his wife that blinded anger that 
had come on the night he was drunk, that dangerous 
threatening anger born of their relationship, which 
seemed bent on its destruction even while it insisted on 
the strength of the tie, that desire to talk about rights and 
satisfy itself with hysteria. 

“You make yourself absurd carrying on like that," she 
said chokingly, “flirting with that common woman." 

A very definite coldness charged his look at her. 

“Now, Veronika," he answered, “don’t be absurd. And 


A Handmaid of the Lord 179 


don’t excite yourself. I don’t know what is bothering 
you, I’m sure. Remember that you are in some one else’s 
house and conduct yourself accordingly. We can’t have 
any Valhalla acts here, you know.” 

“Don’t you dare play King Cophetua to me,” she 
stormed. 

He watched her, still smoking. To Veronika for a 
moment he seemed perfectly strange, a cool mature man 
who had trapped her into dependency of relationship. 
She felt him master of a thousand impulses and desires 
in which he had no intention of including her. The 
structure of marriage toppled, leaned, about to crush her 
and all women under it. “I’ll go and smoke downstairs 
for a while. I do hope, Veronika, that you’ll try to get 
yourself in hand a little.” 

He shut the door softly and with control. 


CHAPTER III 


OTEWART hated scenes. She knew that now. She 
^ was not to be allowed in so far as he could prevent it, 
the emotional relief of them and she was discovering 
that it was easier to sweep disagreement aside with a 
storm of personal emotion and anger than to take it in 
his rather close-mouthed way. Wakening at Winchester 
the next morning, wakening early, she slipped out of bed 
and went to her window with the familiar flat sense of 
personal failure. Her own anger was entirely spent. It 
always died in her as it rose, quickly. Now she was left 
with her constant duty of reconstruction upon her—to 
put things back in order between her and Stewart, to 
reassure herself that she hadn’t slipped backward, that 
things were still going up towards her unmeasured ideal. 

She thought of the people she had met last night. They 
shouldn’t have terrorized her socially, but they had some¬ 
how. She hadn’t been quite able to meet them and yet 
she had no slightest sense of their superiority to her. No 
one was ever superior to that fine Veronika whom she 
carried about secretly with her, the Veronika who could 
consort with princes if she were given opportunity. She 
knew who these people were. Smart, middle-class Eng¬ 
lish people, rich, connected well here and there, but dis¬ 
tantly, not completely, with the groups who dominated 
English life. One gathered that from their talk. This 
place was lovely—but it was not an estate. It had not 
the magnificence of the houses through whose grounds 
she and Stewart had occasionally motored, where there 
180 


A Handmaid of the Lord 181 

were truly great houses inhabited by history in the past 
and in the making. It was that sort of thing toward 
which she yearned. This place was fine enough—it kept 
you up, like having a manicure—but it wasn’t completely 
satisfying after all. She naively thought, looking down 
at the perfection of the autumn gardens, that she would 
like to meet lords and ladies. Lords and ladies—would 
she ever? Her discomfiture of the night before came 
back to disturb her—Stewart’s criticism of her shoulder 
straps. Why was it that while she was mentally desirous 
of so much she never seemed able to quite make the physi¬ 
cal grade—look the part? She liked to dream of meeting 
people, but when it came to actually meeting a host of 
shynesses and gaucheries came to thwart her. If she could 
only dance better, play better bridge, ride, command ad¬ 
miration. 

She wondered how many mornings she would be awake 
before Stewart and regarding him like this. Suddenly 
she knew that their number would be legion—that each 
time she watched him so she would know him a little bet¬ 
ter. Closeness was a mirage of love, of marriage. One 
married, but did not get very close to the other person, at 
first. As time went on and you drew off to look, it was 
clearer that you never had been close. 

Why had Saul wanted her ? Why had Stewart wanted 
her? If it had been Saul with whom she had gone 
through these last months would she have been feeling 
differently this morning? Surer and more exalted? Of 
course she would not have been here. She tried to visual¬ 
ize where she would have been with Saul—in some fur¬ 
nished flat, no doubt. Saul would be hovering about try¬ 
ing to help her get breakfast. Veronika looked down at 
the mauve silk of her negligee—at the white fur rug be- 


182 A Handmaid of the Lord 

side the tumbled bed, and drew her thought away from 
comparisons. They were unfair. 

She guessed that Stewart would be somewhat cross 
when he awakened. He usually was, after a great deal of 
liquor, and there seemed to have been a great deal last 
night. Gathering up a bundle of clothes she went into 
the little dressing-room and dressed carefully. She was 
sure of her clothes this morning. In all the world no one 
could match Americans for sport clothes she thought, 
looking at herself in the dressing-room mirror and thor¬ 
oughly approving of her beige jersey dress with its scarf 
of orange silk. 

She went down the stairs. The hall was open, and in 
the drawing-room a maid, on seeing her, quickly gath¬ 
ered up her dustcloths and disappeared. Veronika gave 
her a good morning and felt delightfully in command of 
the situation. She stood looking around her, the vision 
of being mistress of a great house taking possession of 
her, wondering a little what she would have in her own 
house. How much could Stewart and she afford ? What 
would they afford? How much money would there be? 
She would like to have a house in England and come 
to it for part of the year. 

Lily would come to visit her. It was sweet to be at 
home in a vision, in a dream. The soaring of the spirit 
that always accompanied her dreams was with her again. 

The door opened behind her and she turned to face 
one of the men whom she had talked with the night be¬ 
fore, the brown-faced officer whom she had been con¬ 
scious of disappointing. He was very vigorous and 
handsome in his uniform this morning. 

Good morning,” he said. “Have you seen Captain 
Barrington ?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 183 

Barrington was the red-faced man who had been be¬ 
side her at dinner. 

“No, I haven’t.” 

“I wanted to find out if he had any news.” 

“Has something happened?” 

“Something’s always happening. But that’s it. Noth¬ 
ing does happen to poor Barrington. Each morning he 
has to bid an eternal farewell to his wife and it’s dread¬ 
fully on his nerves.” 

“Why an eternal farewell?” 

He seemed surprised at her ignorance. 

“His company may get its orders any moment. And 
if they come when he isn’t here—they are billeted here 
with Mrs. Denham—why, he doesn’t come back again 
until he gets leave from France—if he does. They have 
a couple of children here—perhaps you’ve not seen the 
kids.” 

“But why won’t they let him say good-by to his wife?” 

“Just at present,” said the officer, quietly, “Kitchener’s 
idea isn’t to take even wives into his confidences.” 

“And you all get such sudden orders?” 

“Oh, not I. I’m training soldiers just now. But these 
companies that are ready just have to move along. Of 
course they all hate the waiting. It’s that that wears 
them thin. Mrs. Barrington’s nerves are suffering.” 

He spoke of it all easily and lightly, as if he could not 
refuse her the information she asked for, but wished to 
tell it without especial emphasis. 

“It’s a dreadful business,” said Veronika. 

“Too bad your president doesn’t think so,” commented 
the officer. 

“He does—that’s why he wants to keep the people he’s 
responsible for out of it. It’s not our quarrel.” 


184 A Handmaid of the Lord 


“Quite so. Not a distinguished position for America 
to take, but entirely safe.” 

“You don’t understand the American point of view_ 

or Americans.” 

“I’ve been in the States, as I told you, trying to get it ” 

“How long?” 

“For a year. I know your New York and I spent a 
terrible week in Chicago. I saw Yellowstone Park and 
I even know your Vassar.” 

“That was my college.” 

“I knew that when I looked at you.” 

Are you making fun of me or of Vassar?” 

Neither. But I had a friend whose sisters had been 
to Vassar. They w r ere like you.” 

“How?” 

“Handsome.” 

“That’s not what you mean at all.” 

“It’s before breakfast. And besides I really must hunt 
up Barrington.” 

He smiled at her, his eyes admiring her dress. But she 
knew. that he really didn’t like her. He didn’t like 
Americans or Vassar. And she wondered why and meant 
to find out. 


His name was Colonel Daggett, and at breakfast a few 
minutes later, with a skill of which she had not suspected 
herself capable, she found herself managing to sit next 
o lm. e guessed that he knew that was purposeful, 
but was only amused by it, possibly tolerating her a little 
more because she had shown a trace of boldness. He 
made breakfast better than dinner had been. Yet even 

“r d r b,e to d ° more than graze the surface 

of things. Her hostess, a large woman who had a great 


A Handmaid of the Lord 185 

air of capability, was kindly, but obviously preoccupied. 
She talked volubly to Stewart of his business, which 
seemed to interest her immensely, but with Veronika she 
had that faintly admiring pleasantness which one gives 
to pretty children. They all were like that with Veron¬ 
ika. The blonde woman with whom Stewart had been 
engrossed the night before seemed now to be equally en¬ 
grossed in Captain Barrington. Stewart, who came in 
later than most of the others, was casual with her. 

Much of the talk was ephemeral, but possibly because 
of Daggett’s revelations of the state of mind of the Bar¬ 
ringtons, Veronika seemed to sense the current of thought 
which flowed along under the chatter. They were all 
absorbed in one thought—the war. Veronika wanted to 
be admitted to their thinking. She felt that she had 
things to say about the war, but even Daggett would not 
talk of it more with her. He refused controversy. But 
when she tried to press him for his reasons for classify¬ 
ing her with his sister’s friends, he laughed at her. 

“You’d hate it if I told you.” 

“No,” she said, and looked extremely pretty, “I’d like 
it.” 

“And after all, I don’t know. It’s your look. As if 
you lived with your fingertips. Mental fingertips, too. 
And you always do want to argue, don’t you?” 

“What else?” 

“That’s enough.” 

“You don’t know us very well when you judge us by 
our looks.” She let her face relax, thinking of Valhalla 
—“It’s not all fingertips. Up to the elbows sometimes.” 

Daggett looked curiously at the profile beside him. 
Veronika had taken on that look which was especially 


186 A Handmaid of the Lord 

hers of a wistfulness that called for protection. The 
artificiality of her hard little social manner, hybrid of 
Valhalla and Vassar, was gone. 

“Don’t take me seriously,” he told her quickly. “I 
was just trying to find an answer to your questions and I 
took the first one that came to hand.” 

She nodded without words and he felt impelled to go 
on, now that she was leaving him alone. 

“What I felt with those sisters of my friend was that 
they were beautifully incomplete—or beautiful and in- 
completed. But they were so content to be so. They 
thought they were done. And the older one seemed to 
have stayed at the same point as the younger one, so I 
suspected the younger one would stay there, too, even as 
she got older. They don’t intend to feel—like your 
president’s attitude now.” 

Stewart claimed Veronika after breakfast. They were 
motoring over to an army training camp. Daggett 
watched her go with her husband with heightened interest. 
He knew of course that she was a bride and the thought 
faintly stimulated him because he had secret and romantic 
ideas about bridehood. He knew a great deal about men 
and women after forty years. Stewart he had classified 
and liked at once, as much as he cared to like Americans, 
and Veronika he had disliked after he had talked with 
her ten minutes. But this unexpected strain of sweet¬ 
ness, of something like submission in Veronika, piqued 
him. He didn t look for it in American women and he 
wondered where it would take her. 

Veronika spent the day trying to make friends among 
the women. There were the Barrington children to be 
sought out, three long-legged girls of eight to twelve 
years, with straight light hair and composed manners, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 187 

and Mrs. Barrington who looked exactly like them, only 
with her hair up. Mrs. Barrington did not welcome 
Veronika’s proffered sympathy. She acted almost as if 
she were prejudiced against her, and Veronika wondered 
how much her talk with Captain Barrington had to do 
with that. For his wife could be expansive. In the 
afternoon Veronika heard her with her hostess and caught 
one flying phrase—“It’s not the probable agony that I 
mind—it’s the waiting for it!” 

But when Veronika talked to her later and tried to 
show, or at least imply, sympathy she found her words 
slipping on the icy coating of the other woman’s reserve— 
and underneath the reserve she guessed that hostility 
flowed. The puzzling thing was they all were less hos¬ 
tile to Stewart than to her. 

There were people for tea in the afternoon. After 
she had realized the somewhat bewildering fact that Mrs. 
Denham had no intention of introducing Veronika to 
each guest and that such omissions betokened no slight, 
Veronika withdrew to a window seat and felt rather 
lonely. She thought, as she always thought, of the scene 
as something to carry home to Valhalla with her—or at 
least to Westover. But she wished she had studied the 
war news more carefully. Stewart was at ease talking of 
campaigns and maneuvers with a knowledge which she 
had not suspected. Why, she wondered, didn’t he talk 
to her like that? 

Lionel Daggett saw her across the room as he came 
in and the diffidence in her manner, the slight pathos, 
which he had noticed in the morning was still there. Of 
course, he thought, as he crossed the room to her, she 
doesn’t know anything at all. Neither informed nor ex¬ 
perienced and yet she can feel. Probably that’s what 


188 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Roy den saw in her. Probably very delightful when she’s 
alone with him and in certain moods. Not nearly as flat 
and suburban as most American girls are. 

“Sitting alone, and analyzing the British ?” 

Veronika shook her head. 

“No—” She stopped there with a smile that was like 
the catch of a sob, and the man thought quickly, “She has 
charm—she is charming”—and sat down to make the 
most of it. 

He was still making the most of it when Stewart came 
up to them, and he watched Veronika’s reception of her 
husband—the sway toward him that he sensed rather 
than saw and that spoke of the unassuaged fritimacy that 
lay between them. Nice fellow, Royden, thought Colonel 
Daggett, but how plastic the girl still is. There’s some¬ 
thing in her heredity or her past life that has betrayed 
that horrible satisfaction so many young married women 
have. 

He had seen that trace of the mark of melancholy per- 
haps. It left him pondering Veronika. Daggett had 
reached an age when he was not ashamed to ponder. 

“Colonel Daggett’s a nice fellow?” asked Stewart, when 
he and his wife were alone. 

“Awfully,” said Veronika, “he talks so well. He said 
he’d come to see us in London.” 

“Did he?” Stewart showed no enthusiasm. He lifted 
her chm in possessorship. 

“Well, don’t waste any thought on him that belongs to 

The spur of that faint jealousy had altered her relation 
to him entirely. Veronika’s heart rose and fell and was 
saddened and excited. Last night he had been critical of 
her of her gown. To-night because another man took 


A Handmaid of the Lord 189 


Some notice of her he was different. Love shouldn’t be 
like that—not a thing you had to reinvigorate. 

They sat again at dinner in Mrs. Denham’s beautiful 
dining-room, a company somewhat different from that 
of the night before. The house guests were the same, 
but there were some young officers who had motored up 
from the camp, and two new guests from London. Ver¬ 
onika was in white, a soft dress of white silk velvet that 
she had bought on Bond Street on one of Stewart’s rich 
days. She sat beside Daggett and he was amused and 
enchanted. His engrossed deference drew the attention 
of the others and she found herself under stimulus be¬ 
coming pleasant, witty, delightful. Even the women 
looked at her with less boredom, and her hostess releas¬ 
ing her mind for an instant from its tangle of responsi¬ 
bility looked down at the girl she had classified as the 
‘‘stupid little American” and thought, “What a lovely face 
that girl has. The light in her eyes! She seems radiant. 
There’s a certain expression—no doubt she’s pregnant—” 


CHAPTER IV 


T T was Christmas Eve and Veronika was alone. That in 
-■* itself had been inconceivable at first. It hadn’t oc¬ 
curred to her that she could be alone. On Christmas Eve 
festivity had always been organized in Valhalla even if 
it never lived to enjoyment. Always there had been a 
celebration of some sort on the twenty-fourth of Decem¬ 
ber, all her life. But a week ago Stewart had gone to 
Scotland, and she then had a touch of influenza so that he 
would not let her go with him and risk further chilling in 
the night express. Of course he had meant to be back 
for Christmas. His telegram yesterday said that he 
would be back Christmas night and sent his love. There 
were people he had to see and he had been detained. His 
letter to-day showed no realization of the enormity of 
leaving her alone on Christmas Eve. 

All morning Veronika pretended that it was all right, 
that it really didn’t matter whether or not one was by 
one’s self on Christmas, and all day the deadly isolation 
struck further into her. No one seemed to be celebrating 
Christmas. On Portland Place there were no lighted 
trees in the windows of the great apartment houses, no 
candles in the windows. In the shops alone she saw some 
sign of recognition of the feast. She stood for quite a 
time before a poulterer’s shop that seemed actually the 
gayest place, with its naked looking geese and turkeys 
hanging outside the door, and she found herself empty for 
the ugly familiarity of Valhalla. London was concen¬ 
trating almost exclusively on packages for the boys in the 
190 


A Handmaid of the Lord 191 


trenches. Presents for soldiers—presents for soldiers, 
conveniences, comforts, novelties that meant nothing to 
Veronika. She had helped at the Belgian Relief head¬ 
quarters the day before—had seen to the packing of 
Christmas baskets of food that were to be given to the 
refugees housed in Hampstead. But to-day she had not 
gone back. She had been superfluous even yesterday, and 
knew it. There were three women to do the work one 
could do. Somewhere else she might be needed, but she 
did not know where to go. 

And she was tired of books. She had read so many 
in such a short time. In the afternoon she sat in the 
warm luxury of a motion picture house trying to forget 
herself and not to let her anger rise at Stewart. Of 
course he had to consider his business. But Christmas 
Eve! Their first Christmas Eve. There should be a tree 
and presents, even if there were only two of them, to 
celebrate the feast. The picture did not help her greatly 
and when she was again outside she hailed a taxi and 
drove back to the flat again. She was standing bleakly 
at the long front window, looking down at the impassive 
street, when she saw another cab come up and an officer 
disappear in the doorway. To her amazement the maid 
came up to her with a name. It was Colonel Daggett. 

It might have been her loneliness or the rose glow of 
the early lit lamps that made Veronika feel that she knew 
him very well and that he was kinder and handsomer than 
she had thought. She held out her hand to him in 
warmer welcome than he had expected. He held it for 
a minute, as if feeling through it the mood she was in 
and its needs. 

“It's a poor day to intrude on you.” 

“Intrude!" she cried, “you’re simply salvation. I'm 


192 A Handmaid of the Lord 


alone here. Stewart’s in Scotland and I’ve been deso¬ 
late.” 

“Then I can stay for an hour?” He seated himself in 
the long chair by the hearth. “Do you know why I came ? 
I wanted to see you again and I’ve another reason. I 
wanted to talk to some one who wasn’t full of war en¬ 
thusiasm or war despair. Some one who was still sim¬ 
ply a human being.” 

“I’m a wretched, selfish human being—lonely for my 
own little place on the earth—a horrible little red clay 
mining town where I’ve been unhappy all my life. Be¬ 
cause it’s Christmas. Isn’t it funny?” 

She laughed, and the candles on the mantel holding 
tottering flames showed her face clearly, with the hair 
brushed back and new, untiained expressions hovering 
around her eyes as if marriage and loneliness and love 
and strange countries were casting mysterious shadows 
instead of leaving marks, faint and alluring. She had 
dressed when she came in, wearing now a red dress of 
crepe de chine, an old one that was the color of faded 
scarlet, and the warmth of its tone had charged her per¬ 
sonality or appeared to have done so— 

“I can tell them that you’ll stay to dinner.” 

“It’s nearly seven. Well—if you’ve no reason why I 
shouldn’t!” 

She spoke through the tube to the cook and Daggett 
watched her, noting the delight she took in the little ex¬ 
citement. 

“But haven’t you friends in London that wouldn’t let 
you be alone when your husband’s away?” 

“No friends really. Acquaintances. People who for 
one reason or other have been hospitable. I like them all, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 193 

but their ways are strange and on Christmas it’s a time 
for your own ways.” 

“For the red clay town where you were unhappy?” 

She knew that he was trying to draw her out, but she 
had no impulse to resist. She wanted to be drawn out, 
to talk of Valhalla, of Lily, of Stewart. And Daggett, 
who had come from his sister’s house, where they mourned 
already the loss of a son, and where emotion had taken 
on very grand proportions indeed, listened to these pica¬ 
yune events and troubles and watched through them the 
lovely readiness of Veronika’s mind and emotions. He 
thought of his sister whom he had left, already looking 
gravely over her grief at the spectacle of a world plung¬ 
ing to ruin and already setting events in proportion, and 
he found relief in Veronika swelling her loneliness to 
tragedy and seeing all life in relation to herself, even 
when she walked on her stilts of generalities. 

The man brought up dinner, serving it as Stewart and 
Veronika always had it served, a medley of American 
and English custom, the courses abridged somewhat, fish 
and savory omitted and the sweet limited to one dish to 
suit their American idea of dessert. The man who served 
looked at Daggett with that appraising look that can 
come through the impassivity of the well-trained servant 
and found him a gentleman. So he gave deft attention 
to the meal and when Veronika took a minute to survey 
the scene, she found it altogether delightful and like a 

play- 

Daggett told her many things about the war she had 
not known and he did not exact from her the measure 
of sympathy that so many people did and which always 
drove her cold because they aborted the sympathy which 


194 A Handmaid of the Lord 

needed time to develop before it could be born. And his 
calmness that was dispassionate made things more real. 
He destroyed the picture, the music hall flare, the swank, 
and she saw the war as it was to Daggett, of indefinite 
length and tragic consequences, stretching on without 
much hope even in victory. 

“Odd/’ she said, “it’s something the way Stewart looks 
at it.” 

“Your husband sees things very clearly. I talked with 
him. He has a great sense of politics for an American.” 

“He has a fine mind. I somehow discounted his mind 
when I married him,” answered Veronika. “I keep run¬ 
ning up against it now and then. Sometimes when I 
don’t want to work things out by thinking about them, 
his mind is like an obstacle.” 

“But he thinks for you—” 

“He can do that. But he mustn’t feel for me or de¬ 
cide for me—” 

“He must just make you happy, then, in the tradi¬ 
tional manner.” 

Veronika stirred the fire with the poker and regarded 
the havoc in the coals. She could never remember that 
you shouldn’t stir an open fire like that. Her mother al¬ 
ways did. 

“I have a kind of premonition,” she told Daggett. “I 
have a premonition or superstition that the time is going 
to come when I won’t expect happiness. I can get along 
without it all right, you know. But I’m always trying 
to arrange things so that I’ll get it some day or so that 
things won’t be out of order if it comes along.” 

“Happiness is for half-wits plucking imaginary dai¬ 
sies,” answered Daggett, a little roughly. “But of course 
there’s pleasure—and joy.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 195 

“I’m not sure that I could make the distinction,” said 
Veronika. 

He smiled at her. 

“Well—let’s say that I give you pleasure to-night and 
you give me joy. But neither of us is happy, possibly. 

I suppose it’s natural that you should chase after your 
happiness. I’ve often been impatient myself with peo¬ 
ple who let young boys and girls strain so after an im¬ 
possibility, and call it part of youth.” 

“Yes,” she answered, and he saw that she wasn’t lis¬ 
tening particularly—that she was letting her mind run 
loose and whither it would. Daggett pulled his chair 
closer to hers with a deft movement. Life was not too 
full of such delightful interludes. Underneath his sophis¬ 
tication he was bitterly lonely in the most intimate and 
fundamental way for touches and caressing words. His 
sister, keyed high, had sent him out like a crusader. And 
he was going to France on the next day. He wanted to 
believe in love, or at least in something beautiful, and he 
couldn’t at all. But he could for the minute believe in 
Veronika, so warm and scarlet and actual, so full of 
childlike honesties and eagernesses about life, so ready 
for it and yet unmarred. 

“You love your husband, don’t you?” 

“Yes—I love Stewart It’s magic—love, isn’t it? A 
few years ago I didn’t know him, and now he’s eclipsed all 
the feeling I’ve had for people I’ve always known. That 
keeps surprising me.” 

“A month ago I didn’t know you and to-night you 
seem the only warm bright creature in this shivering ap¬ 
prehensive London.” 

She turned to him in surprise. 

“You didn’t like me at first.” 


196 A Handmaid of the Lord 

He laughed. “I didn’t like your sentences,” he cor¬ 
rected her. “I suppose I liked you all along. It was 
what made me hunt you up. And now it’s rather a prob¬ 
lem to sit here and tie myself down with a lot of threads 
of convention—pretend that they are ropes strong 
enough to keep me from making love to you.” 

There was no shock in what he said. 

“I suppose you shouldn’t,” she said meditatively, “but 
it does seem hard to send you out in the wet again. I’ve 
always liked to keep people warm and comfortable if I 
could. We never were very comfortable at home and it 
was always a struggle to get even a little warmth and 
peace. That’s why I still suffer so when people don’t 
have it why I can’t hold out against Stewart even if 
I know he’s been wrong and I’ve been right. If I see 
he’s unhappy, I give in. Then he thinks I’m easy—” 

“In all that generosity there ought to be something 
for me?” 

“Of course,” she answered gently and was foolish 
enough to stroke his hand, to wake all the loneliness, to 
rouse the thirst that she couldn’t slake, because if she 
could she would not have been Veronika with her delica¬ 
cies, her modesties. She never forgot the drop of her 
heart into terror and the amazed realization that he didn’t 
feel unlike Stewart as he held her head pressed against 
his uniform, and the sharp scratch of an edge of his 
service badge on her cheek. She did not struggle with 
him. He held her in that violent grasp—and she thought, 
“All men’s kisses are much alike, aren’t they,” and then 
he held her off with tender arms. 

“No you haven’t the scope. I mustn’t spoil you. It’s 
been a good evening. But I think I’ll go.” 

Veronika was still standing by the fire, her cheeks 


A Handmaid of the Lord 197 

flaming to the color of her dress, when she heard the 
outer door click and then downstairs the thud of the 
street door. She put her hand up to feel the scratch on 
her cheek. It wasn’t bleeding. A clock in a church a few 
squares away began to boom. It was ten o’clock. She 
recalled that it was Christmas Eve, and that the way she 
was celebrating it was unseemly. Her moment of un¬ 
trammeled expansion was gone, and in its stead came a 
host of prohibitions and painful scruples. She should be 
in church on Christmas Eve. She should be—God knew 
—in the confessional. 

The thought refused to be stilled. Going into the 
great bedroom she put on a long cloak and a close black 
hat. No sooner did she feel that cold, clay-like fog 
brushing her cheek than she regretted her impulse and 
wished she were back in the warm rose-colored flat. But 
she was held now by superstition. She wouldn’t turn 
back from going to church. She knew that she was 
God-driven and did not dare deny her God, so on she 
went through the streets toward the chapel which she 
sometimes frequented and was at least a little familiar. 
London surrounded her, coldly unaware of her scurry¬ 
ing little presence—London, unhurried by destiny, past 
master of life, wrapped in its gray garments. Veronika 
was small and alien, and she knew how she appeared. 
Yet she wanted her tiny soul to speak to this soul of 
London. Vaguely she felt that her spirit could match its 
spirit in temper if not in strength. As she went on she 
forgot her fear and her isolation grew magical. She 
walked rapidly and directly so that those who passed 
would not doubt that she was abroad on a definite errand, 
and the few passers, a couple of officers, a big man in a 
caped overcoat and opera hat, a man and woman talking 


198 A Handmaid of the Lord 

so eagerly that their bodies sagged toward each other— 
these saw a tall girl in a gray, furred cloak, whose pale 
face was clear against the mist and whose dark eyes had 
excitement in them that was neither happy nor unhappy— 
only stirred. 

To reach the little chapel one went down a flight 
of stone steps. The chapel was underground where it 
had been for hundreds of years, once no doubt the crypt 
of a monastery. Above it was a school or convent of 
some sort, but the chapel itself was preserved in its an¬ 
tiquities. It was cold and holy and candles rose gravely 
on its altars. It reverenced a powerful and awful God 
surrounded by his hierarchy. Veronika liked it to be so. 

Here Christmas was purely the birth of Christ. No 
holly berries, no red-filled stockings, no gaudy trees, no 
symbols of the junketing that Christmas had become and 
that Veronika had always known it to be in Valhalla. 
Yet she found herself not unprepared for this as if the 
observation of the feast in the tawdry way she had*known 
it had somehow made her ready. 

In a rear pew were two old women, old women such as 
always frequent Catholic churches, half cowering over 
their prayers, cuddling to them some comfort of eternity, 
after children have gone from their arms and life has 
grown sterile. A widow in new black clothes knelt be¬ 
fore one of the Stations of the Cross. The altar was 
ready for the midnight Mass. Vases of red poinsettias, 
great flaring flowers that had lost their suggestion of heat 
and were flat and velvet like the embroidery on a priest’s 
vestment, stood on either side of the tabernacle. 

A purple curtain over the door of the confessional 
trembled, and a boy came out, a young man in uniform 
scarcely more than twenty. There was something mag- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 199 

nificent and infinitely pathetic in his appearance, so young, 
so smart in his new uniform and so medieval as he sought 
absolution before going out to kill or be killed. His man¬ 
ner was casual, like that of a boy going to Communion, 
kneeling hastily, somewhat perfunctory. Veronika did 
not see him leave the church. She took her place in the 
confessional on the women’s side. 

In the priest’s tiny nook behind the gratings and velvet 
curtains was a Jesuit, bred into steely reason of religion. 
He was not unkind—nor kind. He was like a finely bal¬ 
anced scale weighing sins. He knew what each sin should 
weigh, how much it counted in the sight of the welfare 
of the church and of humanity—in the sight of God, who 
wanted his church to grow and who tolerated no slip¬ 
shod human emotion kindly. There was no tinge of the 
Celt or Latin in him, those two natures which have done 
so much to humanize and make tender the burden of pure 
religion. To such a one came Veronika, palpitant, Ver¬ 
onika the bride who had no children and who had no in¬ 
tention of allowing herself to have any until it suited her 
convenience, Veronika who had been in the arms of a 
man not her husband only an hour ago. 

When she left the confessional Veronika felt as if she 
had been beaten. With strange people all around her now 
she knelt through the celebration of the Mass and that too 
seemed to shut her out. At the ringing of the bells she 
bowed almost in terror, terror because there was no re¬ 
pentance or consciousness of sin in her, terror that she 
could not strike her breast in humility. 

White-robed boys sang Christmas carols, caroling of a 
Christmas which was solemn and purified. A sudden 
flare of electric lights made the sanctuary bewilderingly 
bright for the Benediction, and the old hymns that she 


200 A Handmaid of the Lord 

had heard so,many times in the Westover convent gave 
Veronika a fainting wave of homesickness. Then the 
service was over and as the rest of the congregation were 
drawing cloaks and furs around them, Veronika went 
into the street again. 

She meant to call a taxi, but she could not find one at 
first and when one did appear and she beckoned it, it went 
on past her, then turned and came back, the cab door 
opened and a man inside leaned out. 

“Want a ride, darling ?” 

She turned away quickly and went down a side street, 
her heart jumping at the insult. The fog was thick and 
yellow now, and she walked blindly against it for a square 
or two, then turned to retrace her steps. Somehow she 
had missed the way. In the blurry glare of a street lamp 
she read an unfamiliar name at the street crossing. She 
was lost and to her excited tremulous mind the matter 
took on huge proportions. It was symbolic and the end 
of things. The words of the priest, scathing her sins, 
seemed to come through the darkness, like disembodied 
spirits. She tried to hold to the thought of Stewart, but 
his image retreated until he was only her partner in sin, 
as the priest had said. Everything was gone, erased by 
the fog, except her shivering spirit and its God. Me¬ 
chanically, she walked on, thinking that she must find a 
policeman. But all the time she knew that no policeman 
could set her straight. He could not do more than direct 
her to the flat, and even there back of the fog she would 
feel God bewildering her, refusing her until she made her 
peace with Him. She would please Him by having chil¬ 
dren. But it was so strange, so remote to give herself 
up to that, and the world was strange enough already. 

It was terrifying penance. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 201 

The fog saturated her. Her hair hung in wisps, and 
she could feel her face wet and slippery and unlike itself. 
A clock struck one. She thought of Valhalla and re¬ 
membered that an ocean lay between her and Valhalla. 
Stewart might never come back from Scotland. Perhaps 
she was abandoned here in London. She had only five 
or six pounds. 

She was praying helplessly, not sure if it were fog or 
tears upon her cheeks. The words of a familiar convent 
prayer came into her head. One of the nuns had told her 
to say it when she was in trouble. 

“Oh, Blessed Mother, who has never refused any one 
who had recourse—to thee—” Fear left her, stilled by 
the familiar words. She stumbled along, clinging to a 
garment of divinity which she seemed to touch in the 
mist. If it was demanded that she plunge deeper into life, 
bear children, not at will, but blindly, that too she would 
do. All her natural mysticism rose to the challenge of 
the fog and her own storming soul. Ever more secret, 
ever more intricate, ever more difficult and more alluring 
was life. 

With reverent superstition she turned a corner into a 
square where queer yellow lights showed like strange 
eyes. There was a bobby, swinging his club. She called 
and he turned, scanning her in superior fashion. 

“Pm lost,” she said. “Can you get me a taxi ?” 

He seemed doubtful as to whether he should not give 
her in charge, and she realized how she must look, wild¬ 
eyed and pallid, with disheveled hair. 

“How did you happen to be out?” he asked curiously. 

“I was at church.” 

At last the door of the house where she lived closed 
behind her again and she thought, as she stole quietly up 


202 A Handmaid of the Lord 

the stairs, that the keepers of the apartment house might 
suspect her of almost anything. But she forgot that as 
she opened her door, for there, still wrapped in his coat, 
but with the fragments of a dozen cigarettes to show his 
waiting had been long and impatient, was Stewart. He 
had no chance to ask her where she had been. She clung 
to him with an eagerness and delight that was unlike her. 

“When did you get home?” The happiness in her 
tone was too clear to question. 

“I got through and came home to surprise you. And 
then you’d gone out—at this time of night. Haven’t you 
more sense ?” 

“I went to church and got lost in the fog. The priest 
says we’re sinners, but we aren’t—or won’t be. I don’t 
feel sinful. What a way things have of coming out right 
after they’ve been all wrong! Isn’t it wonderful?” 

He sighed, half in impatience. 

“Why do you do such things, Veronika? Why do you 
let them upset you so?” 

She had forgotten. He didn’t want her upset. Well— 
she would keep her revelation to herself. 


CHAPTER V 


r | "'HOUGH the war let them alone except for surface 
-*■ manifestations, it dug under the life of Stewart and 
Veronika. They had come with reasonably orthodox 
ideas of marriage and love into a country which was. be¬ 
ing shaken out of orthodoxy. Stewart took the war with¬ 
out sentiment, but without complete aloofness, as a man 
who looks on some one’s else calamity with the reflec¬ 
tion, “It might just as well have happened to me.” It 
hadn’t happened to Stewart, and presumably wouldn’t 
happen to the United States, but it might have. There 
was a cool readiness in his attitude which was kin to 
sympathy. 

Of course he was unable to escape the pervading sense 
around him that life wa9 not as stable as every one had 
supposed, and that great events were on the march, that 
principles which had held true for most people would be 
questioned and analyzed to bits. People were talking 
a good deal about life, haltingly, unaccustomedly, for 
generalities had been left to literary and religious pro¬ 
fessionals too long to come easily to the run of men. 
Put boys were killed, and hate flourished openly and 
agony was common, so that it became natural for people 
to strike deeper into life than they had done. It was no 
longer embarrassing to do it. Some called the new spirit 
hysteria and some patriotism and it was both, and more 
than both. 

Veronika had much of Stewart’s thought. She stirred 
him more than he expected to be stirred or wanted to be 
203 


204 A Handmaid of the Lord 

stirred. But beyond Veronika was the world of which 
she seemed unconscious, the world in which things hap¬ 
pened which were not happening to her. To Veronika 
everything had to be linked to herself or it didn’t exist 
for her. Stewart found that out and it baffled him. For 
tying everything up with yourself meant perpetual emo¬ 
tional excitement and Stewart didn’t like too much of 
that—or trust too much of it. 

The ignorance of Veronika surprised him, too. There 
was her charming ignorance of ugly things, her ignorance 
which was synonymous with innocence. But there was, 
too, her ignorance which was astonishing lack of in¬ 
formation. She knew, he discovered, almost nothing of 
history, little of geography. He couldn’t talk to her ex¬ 
cept of things which happened recently. She had no 
background except Valhalla, college and Westover’s con¬ 
vent, and of those three it was Valhalla which was strong¬ 
est, Valhalla which seemed to remain undimmed in color 
while the others faded. Nor was it the Valhalla of which 
Stewart thought, the important site of ore mines which 
might mean money. Veronika was still absurdly tied to 
that rubbishy little house where she had been brought up 
and to her altogether distressing family. 

Stewart liked people. He had come of a family which 
had been sufficiently well connected and maintained for so¬ 
cial intercourse to be easy. He discovered that Veronika’s 
shrinkings annoyed him now and then. He had thought 
it would be easy to make her enjoy things and people," 
but he saw vaguely after a little that her habit of en¬ 
joyment was secret and intimate. So their deep personal 
relationship was very true and beautiful and their social 
relationship which lives by connection with the outside 
world was not always satisfactory. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 205 

There were places to which Stewart could go by him¬ 
self. He liked the rather coarse flavor of the music halls 
—he knew a club or two where he could go and drink 
excellent liquor. But he could never simply go. He had 
to detach himself artificially from Veronika, who would 
sit alone in the flat and read or write letters home. And 
he would be conscious of her there, fine and alluring, but 
slightly boring. There would be a slight sense of guilt 
at leaving her, which was annoying because neither of 
them believed that a man should not be free to leave his 
wife for an evening. Yet secretly she was aggrieved 
and he felt guilty if he went without her. 

His New York connections wanted him to stay on in 
London until the spring or summer and see how things 
developed. He was employing his time to much advan¬ 
tage, quietly and subtly. There were things to be found 
out and Stewart knew how to do it, avenues of approach 
to be opened so that action could be swift when it was 
known which way this cat of war was going to jump. 
Stewart did that sort of thing extremely well. He made 
friends and gathered opinions and appeared to waste 
days, but he found out exactly what he wanted to know 
as he wasted time and mulled things over with himself 
or with others. But his lack of definite hours and of 
definite tasks bothered Veronika, and to be sure it was 
not a very tangible outlook which she had. She soon saw 
shrewdly that Stewart, who before marriage had seemed 
to her the acme of stable strength, was volatile, and that 
he could not be counted on as a breadwinner who would 
leave her at eight every morning and return at six every 
night. Secretly she had wanted that kind of order in her 
life. She wanted her dreams of romance and grandeur, 
but more immediately she yearned for the order and 


206 A Handmaid of the Lord 


peace and stability which she had never had, and she could 
be possessed with terror at the thought that she might 
not always have it. 

So she pressed Stewart. 

‘When are we going home, Stewart ?” 

“I don’t know exactly. Aren’t you happy here ?” 

“You know that I’m happy. But oughtn’t we to be 
doing something definite?” 

He would laugh at that tone when she took it. 

“The world’s damned indefinite just now. What do 
you mean?” 

“But we’re not getting anywhere.” 

“We’re not getting blown up anyway like lots of 
people.” 

“Stewart, you know what I mean. I mean we ought 
to have a place on the earth that belongs to us. We 
can’t just drift” 

But there was enough of the drifter in Stewart to 
pull away from that. He did want to drift somewhat. 
At least he wanted to be free to drift. He wanted to 
marry Veronika and take her away from her tight, cheap 
little surroundings—and, even as she accused him, play 
something of the King Cophetua. He had shown her a 
new world, a world that made him hold his breath secretly 
because it was so driven and mad. And Veronika, built 
for romance, was going primly through it, asking when 
they should settle down. She was lovely and delicious, 
but Stewart began to have a slight skepticism about 
women as he smoked his interminable cigarette. There 
was a basis for all these old jokes. Oh, well, she was 
beautiful and his own and he loved her. She could 
make him love her so intensely—she could be such a 
creature of flame and delight that it was hard to believe 


A Handmaid of the Lord 207 

she could turn to him a few hours later and say, “But, 
Stewart, oughtn’t we to plan about how we are to live?” 

He felt that he knew how they were to live. Give 
him half a chance and he’d build her palaces, if he 
could get this steel business by the neck, prove himself 
invaluable. 

“Who pays our bills while we’re here, Stewart?” 

“I’ve told you. Consolidated steel. I suppose most of 
the actual money for the investigation has been put up 
by Mr. Henderson. He’s the one that gave me the 
idea of coming over and then backed me up in it.” 

“He’s the one whose cousin lives in Westover?” 

“That’s the one. But there’s no Westover about him. 
He’s big business. Why, Ronny, if I put across what I 
want to put across, this money won’t seem more than a 
dime to him. You don’t realize how these men think. 
Come on, darling, let’s dine out. Let’s go to the Carlton 
—you, in your bronze dress with all the officers staring 
at you.” 

To the Carlton they would go and Stewart would be 
super gallant, especially if he had just slightly too much 
liquor. Then in the morning a bit dull and there was 
nothing for Veronika to do but wander around the flat 
or do a little war work somewhere. But there was such 
a plenitude of women doing war work and if you couldn’t 
get excited about it they always grew icy cold and some¬ 
times angry. 

Then one day there was a letter from Lily and by 
the same mail one from Aunt Kate. They had the same 
news in them. Grandfather Pearse had died, easily, 
peacefully, slipping away one summer afternoon when 
the sun was bright. Aunt Kate described it well. Those 
things meant so much to Aunt Kate—how her kin died, 


208 A Handmaid of the Lord 


whether there was a “struggle at the end,” or not, and 
what the funeral arrangements were and the choosing 
of Mass cards. She described the ceremonies accurately 
and well, having written many such letters, and Veronika 
had a swift backward vision of her grandfather at the 
time of her grandmother’s death. He was dead now 
too. 

Because he sat no longer in that chair by the side 
of the window things had altered tremendously for Lily. 
Lily inherited his money. It was not yet clear how much 
there was, but there might be forty or fifty thousand 
dollars. Aunt Kate wrote of it, “I know you will be 
glad of it for Lily. Both of you girls are finely settled 
now—it’s nice for your father to have his girls off his 
hands financially.” And Lily said, “Grandfather left 
me his money. It’s a delightful thing to have happen 
to you—inheriting money like that. Of course, I am 
sorry he’s gone, you know. Sorry that he’s dead. Yet 
being human, the other thought overshadows sorrow— 
he was old. Think of it, Ronny. It means a lot here 
in New York to have a little money of your own. It 
means I’m not at the mercy of managers. I can back 
myself a little while I’m trying to get on and do what 
I want. I can get the clothes to look the part. I shall 
spend what there is. There’s more to be had and this 
will be an investment in me.” 

Lily was rarely expansive. Life had flowered for her 
out of the old man’s death. Veronika knew how she 
would look—just the proper amount of mourning clothes 
—nothing really ugly—all very effective. Lily spent 
money so well. It was all right. Veronika wasn’t jeal¬ 
ous. No one would imagine She had a right to be. 
She’d married a Royden and gone to Europe. Lily ought 


A Handmaid of the Lord 209 

to have the money of course. Yet Veronika thought a 
little soberly, with a little sigh in her heart, of the freedom 
it gave Lily to have it—the freedom of choice. She 
could marry when she pleased and whom she pleased. 
There’d be no rush about it—no feeling as Veronika had 
felt, that something must be done to bolster up the 
family—no taking a chance on love. Lily would— She 
stopped, not letting her thoughts stray into even the ante¬ 
chambers of disloyalty to Stewart. 

Money of your own is different from your husband’s 
money, just the same, she concluded, and because her 
congratulation of Lily was not quite whole-souled she felt 
the need of bolstering it up. She would send a cable. 
She knew where Stewart sent cables. She would go 
down to that office. Just then it occurred to her that 
cables were expensive, and she didn’t have much money. 
Very little, in fact. Two days ago she had suggested 
to Stewart that she could use some and he had put her 
off until the next day. He seemed to have forgotten. 
In her purse were only ten shillings—and with lunch— 
no, she couldn’t send a cable until Stewart came home. 
That thought galled her more than the knowledge of 
Lily’s inheritance. She went out to walk off a slight de¬ 
pression. Odd, how often she had to leave the flat for 
that. Outside of their rooms something always dis¬ 
tracted her, held her, the wind on a bus top, the sight 
of flower women, fat old bonneted women in the middle 
of a square, a showing of pictures in some professional 
gallery—there were things that took you out of your 
thoughts, were they unpleasant. Also there were the 
casual glances of men and women that made you feel 
beautiful and sent you off into a dream that you were 
as you wanted to be. 


210 A Handmaid of the Lord 

She was at the street door when a sense of unusual 
excitement penetrated to her. The cook who came for 
her orders every morning was leaning out of the basement 
window talking to the valet, who stood on the steps, his 
thin face aflame with something. Veronika wondered 
and went on, drawing on her glove. The eyes of the 
servants followed her and somehow she knew that they 
were hostile. 

On Regent Street she felt the same excitement. The 
war news must be exceptional, for the cry lately had 
been “business as usual” in popular chorus. She stopped 
at a street corner to get a paper and read the com¬ 
munique. There leapt at her a strange headline— 
“GERMANS USE POISONOUS GASES . . . TER¬ 
RIBLE CASUALTIES.” 

A woman passed her, the tears streaming down her 
cheeks, talking under her breath. They didn’t often act 
like that, these Englishwomen. Veronika stood still to 
read and what she read sickened her, sickened her—and 
then, rising for the first time in her, came that passion 
of anger that she had seen so often in the people around 
her, anger and hate. To come upon soldiers like that 
—one knew that they were mowed down by machine 
guns, but at least the tradition of guns and of self- 
defense remained. This wholesale choking, this poison- 
ing, dying in agony, fighting an invisible and inhuman 
foe destroyed the tradition. It was so ridiculous as 
well as terrible to throw people into eternity in such 
horrible masses and then make an eventful occasion of 
the death of an old man somewhere across the ocean. 
When such things happened—if such things could hap- 
P en_ —Veronika’s dreams, little ambitions and involve¬ 
ments were blown away like so much rubbish blowing 


A Handmaid of the Lord 211 

down the street in a windstorm. There, alone, on a street 
corner, with the half-penny paper in her hand, teaching 
her fact and philosophy through its stark black print, 
Veronika had her first mature thought—the first thought 
that lifted her out of her grave self-absorbed childhood 
and girlhood of personal relations into adult conscious¬ 
ness of the world as it would be without her, as it was 
outside of her and the whole tribe of Pearses and their 
problems. For months she had been reading of battles 
and death lists and atrocities and had been sorry and 
aghast and puzzled, with thin little emotions as unmean¬ 
ing as the words. She had talked war and listened to 
discourses on world politics, and never once had the 
matter transcended a difficulty with Stewart or the prob¬ 
lem of what Tom would do with his wife. 

She did not try to formulate what she was feeling. 
She was beyond that need, that extra egotism. She wan¬ 
dered on down Regent Street, her eyes so blurred that 
she only avoided passers-by automatically and did not 
even hear Mrs. Torrance calling to her from the car 
until that lady drew up by the curb and sent her chauf¬ 
feur to speak to Veronika. Mrs. Torrance was one of 
the women whom Veronika avoided when she could, be¬ 
cause of her war violences, but to-day she was not both¬ 
ering with that. 

“Are they really doing that?” asked Veronica. 

Mrs. Torrance nodded. It was the first time she had 
seen any feeling in Veronika about the war and she was 
instantly kindly. 

“I’m on my way now,” she said, “to make gas masks. 
There’s a call from one of the workrooms here. We 
shall work all night and all day till we’ve equipped every 
soldier.” She was one of the Englishwomen who made 


212 A Handmaid of the Lord 

a point of looking exalted. Veronika had said of her 
the other day to Stewart that she probably managed to 
look exalted even in her sleep. That the absurdity of 
her poses masked real emotion Veronika guessed for the 
first time. She got into the car and the women went 
together to an improvised workroom, a ballroom in Lady 
Somebody’s house, crowded already with middle-aged 
women making the masks on incredibly short notice— 
those first useless masks that were never used, that hun¬ 
dreds and hundreds of women made during those first 
days of fear of gas, firmly believing that little pieces 
of gauze (to be soaked in some patent unnamed chemi¬ 
cal) would save their sons and husbands and the sons 
and husbands of other women. Veronika engaged on 
her futile task, folding and pressing the gauze masks 
eagerly, quickly, and listening to the quiet talk, tightened 
under the pressure of fear. 

It was a strange afternoon. Veronika always remem¬ 
bered the sight of all these women, high-colored English¬ 
women, their unaffected, restrained, intelligent faces all 
wearing a single expression, a blend of hurry and fear. 
The expression dropped down over Veronika’s own face. 
She heard them speak of mines, submarines, of the fact 
that American ships were to be submarined, that England 
might be isolated, of Zeppelin raids, and for the first 
time the idea came that all this might happen to her. 
Any night the bombs might strike London—they might 
be killed in their beds. 

She had known of course. But not known like this, 
through sudden sickening knowledge, that the unbeliev¬ 
able was not only for other people who had let themselves 
in for it—but that she herself might find these things 
realities. Those soldiers—-swept so cruelly, so unexpect- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 213 


edly by that gas, choking, falling back in agonies, had not 
expected anything so torturous. But they got it. 

“Will America come in now?” asked Mrs. Torrance 
almost triumphantly, “when she hears of this?” 

“Will your president still keep on talking about being 
too proud to fight?” That was some one else question¬ 
ing her. 

“How can a country bear to fatten on her mother 
country's slaughter?” 

Veronika looked at them darkly. Under the attempt 
to put their questions decently, she saw the resentment 
again, the hate of these women that she roused in them 
because she was free from fear so far—and safe. They 
wanted her to suffer too. They were like sick people 
enraged at the sight of another’s health. The glances 
hurt her. She didn’t know what to say because she could 
not remember those balanced reasons Stewart gave in 
argument—something about the government of the 
United States making a declaration of war being no sim¬ 
ple matter—something about division in Congress— 
something about America being more valuable if she 
stayed out and helped in supplying the foreign countries 
with money and food. Even if she could remember she 
couldn’t satisfy the look in the eyes of these women. 
They wanted more than money or clothes or food from 
her and her country. They wanted suffering. They 
wanted her fear as a kind of hostage from her. 

The room, full of white-clad women, seemed to hold 
a mob spiritually attacking her. Still they kept ques¬ 
tioning her. 

She shook her head desperately. 

“I don’t know what we’ll do. I don’t know how people 
feel over there. They haven’t seen—they can’t know—” 


214 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Can’t they read?” 

“If you had a son would you like to have him gassed?” 

Guessing at the son within her, Veronika shuddered, 
not through love of her unborn child, but at the knowl¬ 
edge that these women had experienced these secret ex¬ 
periences and now saw them come to ghastly fruition— 
the room swam with whiteness, dreadful, vengeful white¬ 
ness. Stewart would be angry if she were sick, say that 
she’d brought it on herself by trying to do things like 
this. She mustn’t be sick. 

They saw and, having made her suffer, were suddenly 
merciful. 

“The child’s pale,” said some one to Mrs. Torrance. 

“Young bride,” whispered Mrs. Torrance, and the sug¬ 
gestion of bridehood, with its implications, went through 
the group quickly. 

Mrs. Torrance leaned to Veronika. 

“You mustn’t mind us. We’re a frightened lot of old 
women to-day. We’re terror-struck. We’ve stood a lot 
and we can stand a lot more. But this—this gas—” 
She shook her head pathetically, her eyes on her two 
sons in imagination, her face drawn, with its exalted 
look erased and instead dread of calamity written on 
it. They bent over their gas masks, each one with her 
bitter thoughts and her female determination to lay the 
responsibility for their use at some door. Veronika kept 
on folding. Perhaps, she thought naively, if I fold a 
lot of these, they’ll know that I do care—terribly. It 
hurt to fold so constantly. Her back ached so much 
these last weeks and her head had a way of paining and 
blurring. That would be part of it, of course, unless 
something dreadful was really the matter with her. Un¬ 
less she were going to die with some hideous secret com- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 215 

plication. The world was full of terror, within her and 
without her. She no longer belonged to herself. She 
belonged to this invading child and to a world at war, a 
friendless world that separated her from everything 
familiar, that insisted on dragging her away from dreams 
and ambitions and plans into a frenzy of upset lives and 
tangled conditions. She didn’t want this maturity, this 
war, this baby. She wanted to be Veronika Pearse again, 
that troubled person who was yet so delightful to live 
with secretly. The emergence that was demanded of 
her and which could not be refused was terrible. 

Mrs. Torrance took her home two hours later. Her 
last words were what might be expected of her. She 
had passed the first shock. 

“We must carry on,” she said, and smiled exaltedly. 

Veronika hated the words and the matching expression. 

That night as she read more dispatches from the front 
she found Daggett’s name in the list of killed. The war 
affronted her personally for the first time as she stared 
at it. 

“Stewart—Colonel Daggett’s killed.” 

He looked over her shoulder to verify it. 

“That fellow we met at Winchester? Too bad, isn’t 
it?” 

“It’s ghastly! I can’t bear it!” 

“Oh, now, my dear, you mustn’t take it like that. 
You know we’re absolutely bound to keep meeting people 
who are going to be killed. You’ve just got to take 
what comes.” 

Veronika had a romantic sense of how much Daggett 
had needed her. She hadn’t done anything for him at 
all. It intensified her feeling that she thought America 
should come into the war. 


216 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Why doesn’t the United States fight?” she asked 
savagely. 

Stewart laughed at her. 

“Maybe we will, in cur own good time.” 

He saw the tears in her eyes and stopped. 

“Veronika, you must remember that you shouldn’t get 
too excited. In your condition—” 

She knew by now that tears and hysterics didn’t endear 
her to Stewart. But to-night they were surely her right. 
Only later, when she was calm, did she realize how they 
bored him and how he had put up with her storm of 
weeping. He hadn’t loved her while it was going on 
either. Another fear stole into her. There didn’t seem 
to be anywhere to turn for safety and restoration. Out¬ 
side of life with Stewart was the storm of war and 
within that life were things that sought to destroy it. 

It had seemed wonderful to sleep in a room with a 
glowing fireplace at first. To-night in spite of the fire 
and her satin quilts she kept shivering. What was it 
Daggett had said—“fools plucking imaginary daisies.” 
Oh, there must be happiness—somewhere. 


CHAPTER VI 


\ T 71TH the spring, London began to stop prophesying 
* * just how long the war would last or just what the 
war would involve. Scarborough had been shelled, a 
challenge to possibility. Terrible things had happened in 
Flanders. Gallipoli was the first great humiliation that 
England had to bear. Zeppelins hovered, half romantic 
and half terrifying, and the air was black with reality, 
but also shot with fantasy. For those who were not 
at the battle front were in many cases still prey to the 
strange romance of war, charged with its high emotions. 
Grief and despair were to come later, but the thing was 
not yet long drawn out enough for such feeling to be 
general and even those who sorrowed were unbowed by 
it and upheld by that stimulant of sacrifice which per¬ 
vaded the nation’s women. 

After the death of Daggett Veronika felt that she had 
a stake in the war. It had been necessary to her, even 
though she had awakened to the meaning of what was 
happening around her on the afternoon of the gas attack. 
But Daggett made it very real. Some one who had cared 
for her had been killed, and though that caring had 
been the accident of chance and the development of a 
mood none the less Veronika took it seriously. War dis¬ 
patches and descriptions of battles began to live for her 
now. Yet the war did not ally her to a group. As she 
had always been personal in her religion so was she per¬ 
sonal in her feeling about the war. It was partly due 
to her way of living, to the fact that she belonged to no 
217 


218 A Handmaid of the Lord 

close circle of friends. Her doctor had told her to walk 
for her health and as she walked she found queer un¬ 
matched manifestations of war everywhere and wove 
them into a pattern of her own. Socialists talked bitterly 
in Hyde Park and she sat on park benches and listened 
to them trying to persuade the world of a conviction 
by spellbinding handfuls of people. She found a little 
open-faced bookshop whose shelves prided themselves on 
containing only radical literature. Here were the con¬ 
troversial journals from all over the world—here the 
books written by minds which hunted outside popular 
conviction, as absorbed in protest against the war as any 
recruiting officer was in his furtherance of it. She even 
went, timorously, for Veronika was no striding social 
worker, into the side rooms of public houses where red¬ 
faced charwomen, richer than ever before in their lives 
because their husbands or sons were at the front and 
they were drawing war pensions, chattered of the war 
in cockney phrases that she could hardly- understand. 
Stewart laughed at these excursions. He was so much 
wiser than she in general experience of people that he 
could not understand that these ventures supplied her 
with a knowledge that was necessary to her now—that 
Veronika could only realize the war through her own 
contacts with things and people. Stewart was absorbed 
and more or less worried these days. There was Veron¬ 
ika who had to be taken care of, who should be brought 
back to America before her child was born if possible 
—and his own plans in which achievement became more 
difficult as uncertainty deepened. He thought that if 
he could settle either Veronika or some definite business 
action he would be able to handle the other uncertainty, 
but Veronika was as difficult as his business. She could 


A Handmaid of the Lord 219 

have gone down into Devonshire with the Liptons. Lip- 
ton was likely to have a hand in awarding government 
contracts. He had urged that on her. The Liptons 
had been very good to Stewart, and he had every reason 
for wanting to cement that friendship. Mrs. Lipton 
apprised of Veronika’s condition had urged that she come, 
and Veronika’s reluctance had fringed on discourtesy. 
She couldn’t bear to leave Stewart. In that emotion 
Stewart had found some delight of course—they had a 
day or two of love-making after the Devonshire plans 
were abandoned which carried them back to the very 
earliest days of their marriage. But then Stewart saw 
clearly that she should have gone—that it would have 
given him a “stand-in” with Mr. Lipton to have Veronika 
as the guest of his wife. 

Stewart knew that you had to indulge a woman in 
Veronika’s condition, but as her moods multiplied he 
wished rather desperately for help in doing it. Nor could 
he help seeing that she hardly had the situation in proper 
proportions before her. Her child—his child—was in¬ 
finitely important, but still one could remain more nor¬ 
mal. Whims perhaps, extravagant desires, those one 
might expect. But her soarings of mood, her exaltations 
and depressions, were beyond normality. She expected 
him to accompany her in every mood and was impatient 
that his approaching fatherhood did not make him abso¬ 
lutely hers. All the vanity of the woman in pregnancy 
for the first time, coupled with its fears and its loneliness 
and its selfishnesses, were hers and that this experience, 
so darkly mysterious in itself, did not come to her with 
a placid background of sheltered life, but against the 
fearsome background of war with its volcanic impor¬ 
tance, made the event in strange harmony with Veronika’s 


220 A Handmaid of the Lord 

life so far. For nothing had ever come to her in proper 
and prescribed fashion—neither childhood, nor religion, 
nor love. Controversy and disorder swirled around her 
and through it she held one hand fiercely tense, putting 
things back in order and checking her own experiences 
often for the sake of maintaining an orthodoxy which 
she hardly knew and certainly had had no chance to love. 

The war dwarfed her now, but it was in consonance 
with her trouble. Uncertainty and roused emotion were 
there. Back to Veronika came the old Valhalla moods 
—the waking to knowledge of trouble—the invading pity 
for herself and for other people—lapses into hysteria 
and the ability to rise easily out of hysteria again. That 
Stewart could not understand. Hysteria had not been 
his daily food as it had been Veronika’s. Hysteria was 
for tremendous occasions and the effects of it altogether 
devastating. A Pearse rose like a phoenix out of hys¬ 
teria, but not so Stewart. He hated that losing of con¬ 
trol of one’s self, the exposure of emotion, and he had 
been trained that resentment is not a thing to be entered 
into lightly-—nor being entered to be left readily. 

So he made allowances for Veronika’s condition, but 
that she should want him to share that condition or de¬ 
mand that his moods match hers, when he had discovered 
hers already to be so transitory, was abhorrent to him. 
There were times too when doubts crept into Stewart’s 
mind and he thought, “Of course it’s absurd. It’s her 
condition—entirely. But if she should turn into an hys¬ 
terical shrewish woman, what can a man do? It isn’t 
as if she didn’t have everything done that it’s possible 
for any one to do for a woman in her condition. She 
wanted the baby—men should stand things, but only 
up to a certain point—” By things he meant the occa- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 221 


sions on which Veronika could grow silent and brood 
over absurdities like the exact date of their return to 
America, which poor Stewart could not and dared not 
fix until he had some government contracts to show the 
Consolidated Steel directors. Veronika seemed to un¬ 
derstand so little that business was in flux. 

When the Consolidated Steel had bought up the little 
foundries around New York and Pennsylvania and 
among them the one in Westover, which had made the 
Royden fortune, Stewart had seen opportunity loom large 
before him. He knew Dean Henderson personally and 
he knew how much Henderson liked him, liked his mind, 
his habit of thought and pleasant manners, his thor¬ 
oughly sound philosophy which had no accent of the 
smart, well-pressed, made-to-order young business man 
full of commonplaces. Stewart thought for himself, not 
more than was fitting, certainly not enough to carry him 
into the class of philosophers, but enough to assure him¬ 
self mental independence. He was independent in act 
too—as marrying Veronika had showed. And these 
things Henderson had noted no doubt, for he had left 
Stewart in charge of the Westover foundry, the leading 
voice of its local directorate, and had also attached him 
to the New York offices, the export center of Consoli¬ 
dated Steel. It was Henderson who had sent Stewart 
to Valhalla to report on the wisdom of acquiring new 
ore properties. It was Henderson who had sent him 
abroad to size up the market for steel and make friend¬ 
ships and alliances which would be valuable and finally 
to get government contracts. It was Henderson whose 
eye was on Stewart now and from whom sharp, man¬ 
datory cables with advice, confirmation and instruction 
came. Stewart knew why Henderson valued him—for 


222 A Handmaid of the Lord 

the maturity of his outlook in spite of his young man¬ 
hood and for the discretion of his judgments. 

But he knew too that Henderson was hard and unsen¬ 
timental, and that one of his creeds was the complete 
separation of business from private life. Henderson's 
private life had been stormy enough. He had had two 
divorces already which had been meat for the news¬ 
papers. But those episodes seemed to have left abso¬ 
lutely no trace on his business life. Whether he gave 
such things any measure of emotion or not Stewart did 
not know. He knew that Henderson liked pleasure and 
that no man of his acquaintance was more quickly ap¬ 
preciative of a woman’s beauty, more interested in the¬ 
atrical displays of beauty or more lavish in his enter¬ 
tainment. Both his wives had been notorious and un¬ 
checked spenders. But Henderson remained in control 
of himself while vast numbers of people read in the 
papers of his reasons for his divorces. Stewart had 
seen him during the progress of the last one and there 
had been nothing, neither tenseness nor nervousness nor 
absent-mindedness, to suggest that these emotional affairs 
took his mind off his work any more than if they had 
been easily dismissed conversations with the women. He 
had decided views about women, and Stewart knew also 
that his approval of Stewart’s marriage had been a quali¬ 
fied one. His courtesy to Veronika had been unbounded. 
He had given a delightful dinner for her at the Ritz one 
night. But he had not wanted Stewart to take her abroad 
and had said so. 

It s a hard trip and you need every ounce of energy 
to put into what you’re doing. You can’t think of two 
things at once. And when you’re traveling with a woman 


A Handmaid of the Lord 223 

she has every right to your entire attention. Especially 
a young woman like Mrs. Royden.” 

Stewart had said earnestly and aware that there was 
naivete in the statement: 

“I’m sure she will be a tremendous help to me, Mr. 
Henderson.” 

Henderson had not contradicted him or argued with 
him, although Stewart was ready with special pleading 
for Veronika because Veronika was an extraordinary 
person. Henderson had simply said courteously, “Well, 
you must be the best judge of that, of course. In war 
time things are so uncertain and conditions often so diffi¬ 
cult for women that I questioned the pleasure of the trip 
for Mrs. Royden. And of course the duration of your 
trip will depend so much on conditions as they develop—” 

That was exactly the reason, Stewart wanted to say, 
why he couldn’t possibly leave Veronika. If the trip 
should stretch out it would be impossible to be separated. 
Just as he was about to make this point clear he discov¬ 
ered that the subject had been dismissed. That was a 
way his patron had and Stewart knew that it did not 
mean any alteration in his judgment, but merely that 
the matter was waived until his judgment should have 
proved correct in the particular instance. It often did 
so, though of course it wouldn’t in this case. Veronika 
was an educated woman, not at all the type of person 
whom Henderson had run across in his experiences with 
women. Veronika would help. Besides he couldn’t leave 
her. Put an ocean between himself and Veronika? It 
couldn’t be done. At the thought his heart grew hot 
with emotional tenderness and desire. He had thought 
he would change Henderson’s point of view when he 


224 A Handmaid of the Lord 

put some big contracts across and there must be oppor¬ 
tunities or he wouldn’t be sent like this. 

And yet—after five months in London—he had done 
a great deal of prospecting, but he could not get the 
contracts. Not that the results or lack of them had 
anything to do with Veronika. Of course if he had been 
alone he would have done things a bit differently. He 
hated to admit even to himself that Veronika’s lack of 
social experience, her presence, without the ability to 
mix easily, had been in any way a drag. But there had 
been some chances they had missed. The way to play 
this was to be sympathetic with the English, of course 
not going too far, but to be friendly, sympathetic, to 
get acquainted, make them like you, and get their busi¬ 
ness. Veronika felt the war now, of course. But her 
expression of her feeling was so often unfortunate. In 
Stewart’s phrase she “worked herself up” over it, which 
didn’t help any one, neither the war nor her condition 
—and certainly not business. Sympathetic affability was 
the thing. That was what she ought to offer these Brit¬ 
ishers. And she was continually not seeing things as 
they were, because of her ignorance of geography and 
history. 

The winter passed and just as Veronika was beginning 
to feel stronger and more like her healthy self, there 
came, as if in celebration, the glory of the English spring. 
The sun, which had been for months obscured, suddenly 
poured down upon London. May trees blossomed, and 
they motored through the country on Sunday afternoons. 
Veronika felt again that she was in her storybook world, 
as she looked at sturdy old villages with, stone houses 
and ivy-covered cottages as only an American used to 
the monotony and fragility of wooden buildings can 


A Handmaid of the Lord 225 

look. The last two weeks of April seemed to shake off 
a good deal of overhanging horror. Veronika relaxed 
and Stewart, feeling that his work was going well, con¬ 
fided to her some of his recent successes. There might 
be contracts with Belgium as well as England. It all 
looked good. In imagination he built and spent a fortune 
for her. That was rather unlike Stewart, but he had his 
secret visions of the coming child and had already be¬ 
gun in characteristic fashion to decide on all the draw¬ 
backs he should not have, all the habits that he would 
not develop. With the world toppling around them, and 
Stewart at least knew that it was toppling, they took 
time to dream and plan. 

Every one was doing that during those weeks. The 
first reaction from the intensity of strain had come. 
Amusements were revived, ostensibly for the soldiers 
coming home for week-ends, but actually because even 
those at home needed and wanted them. The first ex¬ 
altation had passed—the first mourning was over. In¬ 
dividual griefs and national gravity would still increase 
indefinitely, but the initial shock was over. 

So it was with Veronika’s pregnancy. She was grow¬ 
ing accustomed to it. She flattered herself that she 
'was doing some social things more skillfully too. Like 
handling Mavory, who did not mind coming to the flat 
now or dash away as soon as dinner was over. Mavory, 
from having been a fresh, red-faced young Englishman 
had grown into a rather weather-beaten one after one 
single winter’s campaign. He did not care to talk about 
the war when he came to see them, not even about the 
mechanical phases of it. America interested him only 
because like all the rest he was completely unable to 
comprehend her strange point of view. But Veronika 


226 A Handmaid of the Lord 

was no longer antagonistic to Mavory. Even his stupid¬ 
ities seemed pathetic and his coarseness, augmented as 
it was, did not trouble her too much. They all went to 
a music hall once and Stewart was delighted with what he 
considered Veronika’s new expansiveness, but Veronika 
marveled as she watched the men that they could sit 
together and watch a dull-faced, yellow-haired girl kick 
through a dance and evidently enjoy it. To-morrow 
Stewart would be her attentive husband and Mavory, ab¬ 
sorbed in his business, would be on his way back to a 
succession of disagreeable and probably hideous experi¬ 
ences. But neither of them seemed to have anything in 
mind now except the yellow-haired girl. There was a 
joke, which seemed to Veronika both dull and distasteful 
and the men laughed uproariously. Stewart was certainly 
not thinking either of Veronika nor of his child. He 
shouldn’t laugh about jokes like that, cheap jokes about 
married people. But he often was amused by such things 
as if the holiness of much of their experience could be 
doffed or forgotten. 

She knew what her mother would have said, how 
even Lily would have shrugged the thoughts away be¬ 
fore they rankled. “Men are like that.” But men 
shouldn’t be like that according to Veronika’s carefully 
built hope of a world. And they weren’t always. 

The yellow-haired girl threw a fresh impertinence 
at the audience, displayed a plump and dazzling back 
and was gone from the stage. Stewart turned to 
Veronika— 

“Not so bad, was she?” 

“Wasn’t she?” asked Veronika with rather chilling 
emphasis. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 227 

Across her head the eyes of the two men met in secret 
amusement. Veronika was excluded from their jovial¬ 
ity. Anger was her first swift answer, but she found 
herself concealing it with new guile. 

Then a troop of girls came on the stage and she 
suddenly felt heavy and unattractive. The men beside 
her, smoking, appraising the girls, seemed formidable. 
She longed to somehow interpose between their comfort¬ 
able enjoyment and the beauty before them some moral 
judgment, throwing up the age-old defense of the woman 
who feels her wings clipped, who begins to be fearful. 
For Veronika was beginning to be fearful—that she 
would not keep her charm, that her attractiveness would 
grow stale, and she was profoundly humiliated that she 
should feel any necessity for competing for men's atten¬ 
tions and affections. She was beginning to understand 
so many things, dimly yet and without much formulation, 
but still to understand them—why women became shrews 
if they did not watch themselves, why women found 
morality useful as a weapon—and other things like the 
great resentments that underlie feminist movements. In¬ 
tellectual arguments about these things had always bored 
Veronika. The romantic point of view had held her. 
But now with her appetite whetted for adoration and hav¬ 
ing come to regard it as her due, she felt herself grow 
heavy with her child while, with other men, her husband 
admired slim girls flitting about on the stage. And Stew¬ 
art was a good husband. 

They went to the Carlton after the theater and found 
a table where they could watch the dozens of officers 
and girls and distinguished elderly men and women. 
Veronika was hungry as usual and they ate and drank 


228 A Handmaid of the Lord 

and were very gay—so gay that Veronika felt blurred 
as she was helped into the cab and Stewart laughed at 
her. 

“You’re a darling to-night,” he told her, and, regard¬ 
less of Mavory, whom they were taking to the station, 
held her close against him. She did not pull as she 
usually did when Stewart was slightly tipsy. It wasn’t 
unpleasant for once to ride with circumstance—to simply 
enjoy being alive for that moment. 

The air in Victoria Station cleared her head, and she 
felt that she had been somewhat debauched. 

“Good-by, Ronny,” said Mavory. He had been call¬ 
ing her that for the last few hours. 

“Good-by,” she said. 

“Can I have a kiss?” asked Mavory, and bent toward 
Veronika, with a glance at Stewart. 

Stewart laughed. 

“I’ll lend you one.” 

Mavory kissed Veronika and because he was feeling 
gay after his liquor and because his caress was as in¬ 
consequential as it well might be, Veronika’s outrage was 
doubled. After he had left she stormed at Stewart. 

“How could you?” 

“Why, Ronny, it was only a joke.” 

“So that’s all I mean to you—” 

“Oh, please—dear—why must you always get things 
so out of proportion?” 

He said it wearily, when they were back in the flat. 
It had been a pleasant evening, but here at the end of 
it was Veronika raising riot over nothing. Stewart was 
sleep-ridden. 

She saw that he wanted sleep more than her forgive¬ 
ness and that frightened her again. She let him go to 


A Handmaid of the Lord 229 

bed and felt hideously abandoned. Where could she turn 
to get away from war and difficulty? To get into a 
bright circle of safety, peace and order. 

So she prayed. There were prayers that she trusted 
as potent and she wove them together. Hers was a 
strange indirect prayer, a prayer that meant to be noble 
and was offered for a suffering world, but a prayer that 
circled closely round herself and her hopes, her securities. 


CHAPTER VII 


i 

TN August Stewart brought Veronika home, at least 
as far home as New York, and as much as a rented 
Gramercy apartment could be home. She felt it was 
quite completely so for a while. There was light, and 
the sense of destruction was lifted in a gay New York, 
occupied with benefits for this and that cause. But espe¬ 
cially there was Lily, who was never disappointing. Her 
grandfather’s money was, as she expressed it, “gallop¬ 
ing around,” and Lily regarded its profligacy as invest¬ 
ment. She no longer looked in shop windows and cal¬ 
culated costs. She went in and bought, not too many 
things, but that exact number which would give her 
distinction. She was making valuable friends too. 
There was nothing Bohemian about Lily’s circle. It was 
not a separatist group, but one which did what it pleased 
because it could afford to. Every one liked Lily because 
she was beautiful and had grace to carry her everywhere. 
And just as she dressed, she lived, with restraint. She 
had taken an apartment of her own in the West Fifties 
and furnished it. There was a plain bedroom, mostly 
given over to windows, a long mirror and a glass ward¬ 
robe. The living-room had an ebony piano and a rug 
in which colors had blended softly for a hundred years 
and which, Lily said, was her gift to the piano. For 
the rest, the furnishing had been contributed. She had 
let it be known that she wanted chairs and there had 
230 


A Handmaid of the Lord 231 


been men and women who felt it a privilege to give 
them to her or to lend them. Nor did any one give 
Lily less than the exquisite. 

The dining-room furniture limited Lily’s parties to 
four—“quite enough,” said Lily—but a dining-room 
there must be so that Lily could choose her food and 
have it brought to her at home instead of being at the 
mercy of hotels and restaurants. And there was also 
an incidental bedroom for a maid who could cook and 
do everything else that was necessary to make Lily com¬ 
fortable. 

Lily’s spring into luxury had no effect of suddenness 
and none of its absurdity. She was completely prepared 
for it. Such of her old life as was necessary to slough 
off had been sloughed off. Valhalla meant nothing to 
her. She admitted it as the place where she was born 
and that was all. Her life was no pose. It had become 
this thing of comfort and luxury, beauty and hard work, 
limousines and week-ends at country places, admiration 
and adulation, which it appeared to be. She was de¬ 
lighted to see Veronika, but it was because Veronika 
was a person she was fond of and not because she was 
her sister. Stewart admired his sister-in-law very com¬ 
pletely. He had liked her even in Westover and in 
Valhalla, but for him Veronika’s entire immediate fam¬ 
ily had been deplorable. This Lily of New York, sophis¬ 
ticated, but not in the least poseur, who knew people 
whom Stewart knew it was immensely valuable to know, 
was a delightful surprise. Her name was just beginning 
to be known in the theatrical world, the musical comedy 
in which she had the second part almost bound to have 
success and a presumable long run. And in all her pub¬ 
licity there was nothing that was not correct enough 


232 A Handmaid of the Lord 

to do her credit, no matter how she might later direct 
her ways. 

Veronika admired Lily too. When she first saw her 
across the footlights in September, looking a little un¬ 
real, but completely charming, singing inconsequent lyrics 
in a voice that was never tired and never strained, she 
understood Lily’s success and why it had been so rapid. 
Of course her grandfather’s money had no doubt helped. 
But most of it had been due to Lily herself, so much in 
command of her life and yet so artistically in command, 
never struggling or noisy, but deft, exact, uncontentious. 
The convent had done that for her, coupled with her own 
clear desire that was never held back by worry about other 
people. 

Veronika tried to draw her into a conference about 
the family. 

How do you suppose Tom is getting along?” 

Tom,” said Lily, “is alternately being scolded and 
hugged by that girl he married.” 

“I wish there were something we could do for him.” 

“You can lend him money. But it won’t get him any¬ 
where. He was after me, of course.” 

“He tried to borrow money from you!” 

“Of course he would!” 

“What did you do?” 

“I let him have five hundred, and now,” finished Lily 
smoothly, “I won’t let him have any more.” 

“He wants more?” 

“Last week. The last time he wanted it for some 
sure investment which was going to make him rich in 
a week or so. This time he wants it to help him buy 
a little home—you know his precious 'love-nest.’ Well, 
I’m not feathering it for him.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 233 

“It’s horrid to think of his coming to his younger 
sister for money.” 

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It's natural. I’ve 
got a little and he hasn’t. But there’s no use giving 
it to him.” 

“I think a lot about Valhalla.” 

“You waste your thoughts.” 

“But after all they are our own family.” 

“That’s not to be denied. But we’re grown up, you 
know, Ronny. We can’t let ourselves be dominated by 
that horrible hole. You forget them. Stewart’s going 
to do a lot and he won’t be helped by that Valhalla busi¬ 
ness. Did I tell you I met Stewart’s boss?” 

“Where?” 

“Great Neck last Sunday. He’s recovering from his 
last divorce, you know. I rather like him.” 

“Did he speak of Stewart?” 

“I spoke of him. Of course you don’t get anything 
out of a person like Paul Henderson.” 

“I can’t understand him at all. He gave a dinner 
for me before we went abroad, but I didn’t find out 
anything about him. And I didn’t look very well.” 

“I understand him,” said Lily, with competence. “I 
like him too. I like men with poise and cool critical 
faces. He doesn’t look his age and he’s past the point 
when he would have begun to look it. He’ll always be 
as he is now. Some day I shall marry a man like that. 
It would be fun to stir him up and how he’d take care 
of you!” 

Veronika shuddered. 

“Divorced twice—” 

“Well—he treated them both very decently from all 
I hear. However, I agree with you that it would be 


234 A Handmaid of the Lord 

pleasanter to have some one not quite so shopworn/’ 

“You only pretend that you’re hard.” 

“I’m not a bit hard. Hardness makes lines in your 
face. I’m not hard or cynical or anything so middle- 
aged. I am going to get plenty of thrills, Ronny. You 
haven’t any corner on them.” 

“Thrills—■” said Veronika, slowly, and looked uncon¬ 
sciously down at her strangely shaped figure. “I don’t 
want thrills.” 

“I know. You want solidity—peace, order, heavy 
suburbanity.” 

“Something better than that.” 

“What then?” 

“Oh, fine things,” answered Veronika, “fine things— 
the sort of things you are getting now. But then I don’t 
want only things. I—” 

“Want the grace of God too,” added Lily lightly. 

“Maybe that’s it.” 

It was hard to define, Veronika thought often, during 
those days when she dragged herself around and watched 
Lily in beautiful enjoyment of life and esthetics. It 
was hard to define what she felt Lily was leaving out. 
She did not want to see Lily harassed with worry. 
Often and often she had fought against that, when they 
were children. And yet she vaguely resented the fact 
that Lily would not return even in discussion to Val¬ 
halla, that she would not wear again those old intimate 
trials and responsibilities that had once belonged to them 
and were still real. Veronika could still worry about 
Tom. Tom was doing nothing except change from one 
position to another. She could even worry about her 
mother, whose infrequent curlicued letters came to her 
now and then, bearing incoherent complaints. Because 


A Handmaid of the Lord 235 

they were hers, and even her suffering was dear to her. 
No, Lily and Stewart would not see that. 

But these were trifles. The big thing in her thoughts 
was the coming of her child, and in September that be¬ 
came distressing, for Stewart left her to go abroad 
again. 

He had something on his mind. Veronika knew that. 
A certain evasiveness ran through his manner when he 
had something in mind that would hurt her, and Veronika, 
supersensitive now, recognized it. Then one day he told 
her. 

“I’ve got to go to England again, Ronny.” 

“When?” 

“At once.” 

“But—we can’t.” 

“No,” he said, and tried to make it rueful, “we can’t. 
But I must.” 

“But you couldn’t leave me now—alone here. It’s 
only a month.” 

“Ronny, dear, it can’t wait. Henderson wants me to 
go. I’ve got the information no one else has. I’ve be¬ 
gun the job—” 

“I suppose you’d have to. But to go without me now! 
If one of us—it’s so perilous, every way.” 

“You’ll have every care, darling. And I’m almost 
sure to be back in time.” 

“But it’s so frightening. A thing you’ve never gone 
through—” 

“Do you suppose I want to leave you, darling?” 

He didn’t at that moment. But then later, as she 
heard him whistling his way through his packing, calling 
gayly to her that he should take this or not take that, 
Veronika knew that he really didn’t mind leaving her. 


236 A Handmaid of the Lord 

He made innumerable arrangements for her. They were 
staying in a pleasant and cool part of the city, in 
Gramercy Park. There was to be a car at her disposal. 
There was every precaution taken to make sure the doc- 
tor would be ready and the nurse was to stay with 
Veronika from the time of Stewart’s departure. But 
with these things done, Stewart’s feelings began to rise. 
He had no desire, Veronika saw, to go through that 
dark spiritual experience with her. No more than Lily 
had. She’d have to go it alone, to take all the responsi¬ 
bility alone, with Stewart across the ocean. 

And just as he couldn’t help letting his pleasure show 
through at being given a big job to do, at being re¬ 
intrusted with contract securing, so Veronika couldn’t 
help nagging a little at the departure. 

“You’re really glad to go,” she would say, so that he 
could deny it. He would always deny it, but each 
denial brought him nearer to wanting to go, secretly. 
And subconsciously, Veronika knew that. 

Then, just at the very end, it was agony for them 
both. They merged in it. Stewart saw his wife, in 
her shapeless cape, standing at the dock with the nurse 
in the background and Lily, who had come down, since 
it was not matinee day, beside her. Lily was wearing 
cool tan linen and was so charming that it seemed to 
hurt Stewart to see Veronika beside her. He took his 
wife in his arms as something infinitely precious which 
he was truly grieved to leave and whispered to her with 
a passion of love that there was no mistaking. Because 
they suffered together the parting became bearable to 
Veronika. 

She went back to her temporary home and to the en¬ 
during of a dim delicious sense of pain, the loneliness 


A Handmaid of the Lord 237 

of separation in love. For with Stewart away all the 
petty irritations vanished. He became distinguished. 
Every memory of him took on fresh colors and delight. 
He became exactly as she would have him, unmarred 
by limitations. He was fine and purposeful and de¬ 
voted. Love was kinder to her so, at a distance, with¬ 
out any of the restraints of the body, but purely as a 
thing of imagination which knew no boundaries. She 
could live almost by letters and the days slipped by, warm 
days, heavy with mystery, moving slowly toward a des¬ 
tination of wonder. 

Stewart’s letters and cables broke the monotony. He 
lavished them on her, finding no doubt too that to adore 
an absent Veronika was delightfully easy. He found 
that success fairly came to meet him now. He wrote of 
the cordiality with which he was received in London, 
of the chance that there was to do business with the 
Belgian government, of people of consequence who paid 
him attention. Then Veronika began to look back on 
London itself as a former home and to weave around 
it the web of nostalgia which was bound to endear it 
to her—to think again of Mavory’s flat with its long 
curtained windows and little iron balcony and spacious 
bedroom, where the coal fire glowed, of the wet smooth 
streets and the crypt-like church—of tea cakes at Bus- 
zards and buns sandwiched with water cress, of her first 
peach melba at the Carlton, of filet of sole, of the white, 
hospital-like rooms where she had made Red Cross dress¬ 
ings, of the confused storerooms where she had sorted 
garments for Belgian relief and of soldiers marching 
and Zeppelins hovering. She read the war despatches 
from England eagerly, for they meant more than any 
other news in the papers. 


238 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Late October came and each day she thought “this 
may be the day,” and the nurse became anxious and com- 
monplacely facetious over the delay. Lily had little time 
to come to see her sister in Gramercy Park. She and 
not the star had made the hit of “Love Little and Long,” 
and it multiplied her responsibilities. Besides Veronika 
knew Lily had small interest in the coming child. A 
baby was all right, but the process was not pleasant and 
certainly not attractive. Such things were very remote 
from Lily’s life. She telephoned Veronika every day, 
and once she had news of Stewart through Mr. Hen¬ 
derson. She had seen Paul Henderson the night before 
and he had said very flattering things about Stewart. 

“He asked about you too, Ronny, and wanted to know 
if you were perfectly well looked after.” 

“How decent of him.” 

“He had a box at the show last night.” 

“Lily! Is that man serious about you?” 

“Oh, hardly in the home and family sense,” laughed 
Lily. “He’s an appreciative old thing. Did you know 
that that picture Carlotta Myers did of me is to be used 
on the cover of The Drama this month? Fancy that 
advertising!” 

Veronika went singing from the telephone that morn¬ 
ing. Stewart in Europe on important missions, Lily 
succeeding beyond every one’s hopes, her child almost 
in the world and around her, in the expensive apartment, 
that order and luxury which she loved. She must cer¬ 
tainly do something for Tom and her father, was her 
succeeding thought. 

“Do you feel all right?” asked Miss Hastings. 

“I feel wonderful.” 

“That’s the way you always feel—-just before.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 239 

“You’ve got that address to cable Mr. Royden?” 

“I certainly have.” 

The nurse took out her thread and commenced her 
endless tatting. She was making edges for a dozen towels 
in these intervals of waiting. For half an hour her 
hook flashed in and out. Then Veronika stood before 
her. 

“ I think,” she said, “I feel sort of queer.” 

Miss Hastings looked at her competently. 

“How, Mrs. Royden?” 

Veronika did not answer directly. She bent over a 
little. 

“I ought to have my husband,” she said thickly. “I 
ought to have my husband.” 

Miss Hastings laid her work aside. 

“Come,” she said, “he couldn’t help us now, could 
he? We’re going to be fine. Now let’s see if there’s 
another pain. That one is passing, isn’t it?” 

2 

You learn so much, thought Veronika, turning wearily 
on her side, in bearing children. It must be the last 
thing there is to know. For when you know about it 
you know how everything comes about. And all the 
people who write smart things about living are mostly 
men anyhow and don’t know anything first hand. Only 
women know, who see life come out of that pain and 
blackness and listen to the click-click of consciousness 
returning through ether. All people come that way. 
There’s power somewhere, running through the whole 
thing. Strongly and cruelly, but with purpose. Cruelly. 
To think they called it sin when you did not willingly 


240 A Handmaid of the Lord 

accept all this torture-blurred experience that the world 
conspired to hem around with fictions of the rush of 
mother-love, of the pain so soon forgotten, of the tre¬ 
mendous reward. Even if you got through the pain, 
the injustice kept taunting you. No God who made 
women ever meant them to suffer like that, and again, 
and again, or destined their lives to be offered to such 
occupation and pain. In all these years why hadn’t men 
done something about it? That was like men—agree¬ 
ing with God that this was women’s part. The hard 
part. 

She shuddered away from the thought of more chil¬ 
dren, and from the obsession of being caught in a net, 
depressed by the fatalism which surrounded this business 
of child-bearing. There was the religious injunction and 
the easy complaisance of men and the hints one came 
upon everywhere that something in women did not re¬ 
sist. She had found it in Sophocles the other day, just 
before the baby was born, when she was trying to make 
her mind stern in the thought of the Greek women— 

In vows forsooth a woman shuns the pangs 
And pains of childbirth; but the evil o’er 
Once more she comes within the self-same net, 
O’ercome by the strong passions of her soul.” 

The threatening words stuck in her mind. She began 
to wonder what Stewart would say to all these thoughts. 
She knew. “Don’t bother, darling, about a lot of rules 
and dictums. Take things as they come—adjust.” 

And so for generations women had stumbled on— 
and on—bewildered— 

“A nice bunch of letters—and one from England,” 
said Miss Hastings, coming in with them in her hand. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 241 

Veronika sat up. That was what she needed, the let¬ 
ters from Stewart. He was the only person who be¬ 
longed to this experience except herself. His last cables 
and letters lay under her pillow. One of these would 
tell when he was returning. He might be on his way, 
and when he arrived she would have the baby in that 
pink silk bathrobe—and herself wear the new negligee— 
and he would rest her so. He would rest her spirit, for 
somehow he must understand, since it was his child too, 
how overwhelming it all had been. 

She read. Stewart had his contracts signed. It meant 
money and prestige. The old foundries at Westover 
would begin to work overtime—money for the Roydens 
all of them. The ores at Valhalla would be requisitioned. 
It was going to please Henderson immensely. The future 
was limitless. Veronika read impatiently. When was 
he coming to the part about her and the baby and what 
she had gone through? She ran through his talk of 
business. Then—‘Tm so glad you’re over it all, dear, 
and now do take care of yourself. I’ll be delayed a little 
longer than I thought. I’ve a chance to cross to France 
and, aside from the business importance of course, it 
gives me some first hand knowledge of what is happen¬ 
ing there. Too big an opportunity to miss—Paris in war 
time. I’ll see what gorgeousness I can buy you in Paris. 
Tell that nurse to keep you in bed a good long time and 
give my love to the kid. Love, darling—” 

With her head buried in her pillow Veronika began 
to weep quietly. He could go to France and leave her 
still longer. How could he? Didn’t he know how hard 
it had been? Didn’t he know? Didn’t he care? Did 
he think she would bear him children for such recogni¬ 
tion! 


242 A Handmaid of the Lord 

The nurse came in and found her red-eyed. She 
was slightly impatient. 

“Now, Mrs. Royden, you mustn’t let yourself get dis¬ 
turbed about anything. You’re still weak and we must 
think of the baby, you know.” She sat down, deter¬ 
mined to bring cheerfulness into the room, and began 
to read the newspapers. 

“Look, here’s a lovely picture of your sister.” 

Veronika looked at the rotogravure sheet. Lily’s 
lovely face, serene and spiritual, gazed back at her, happy, 
seemingly faintly ironical at Veronika’s distress. 

“Why do you care ?” she seemed to say. “Why do you 
let things hurt you and lose your looks?” 

In the next room the baby cried, the gasping sharp 
cry of the infant. Every nerve in Veronika responded. 

“Is the baby all right, Miss Hastings?” 

“Of course. You mustn’t begin to worry about her 
every time she cries.” Miss Hastings left the room to 
look in the nursery and prove her point. 

“You mustn’t worry,” said the nurse; “you mustn’t 
care much,” said Lily’s picture. But if you couldn’t help 
caring you would worry. If you were sure life was 
going to take care of you, as it always did of Lily, that 
was one thing. But if, as with you, life lay in wait 
always maliciously tripping you up every time you started 
to exult in happiness, you kept watching for traps and 
fearing them. You could not help but fear. 

She was committed to life, as Lily was not. She had 
given herself to her family, to marriage and Stewart, 
to child-birth. When these things had you in their power 
they wouldn’t let go, thought Veronika. You never could 
get away—you never wanted to get away, even from their 


A Handmaid of the Lord 243 

cruelty. But it was too hard to go on when they ex¬ 
plained your full responsibility. Now there was the child, 
who had come from nowhere, and to whom she must 
always belong. In her weakness the relationship seemed 
to weigh very heavily. Desperately she wanted Stewart. 
She could imagine him crossing to Paris, wrapped in 
his great coat on the deck of some ship, talking to other 
passengers about the war. He would say, “Yes, Pm 
married. Wife’s in America. I have a small daughter 
whom Pve never seen.” 

Why couldn’t she be like that too, then? She would 
write him a letter and be as casual as he. Rapidly she 
phrased it in her mind— 

“Dear Stewart—By all means don’t let any opportunity 
of seeing Paris go by. The baby and I are quite well—” 
No, he should be made to see that his responsibility 
was deep, that he had somehow sinned in his absence— 
Her head was hot and her thoughts simmered shrew- 
ishly. 

“I wish I were dead,” she said gloomily, “he wouldn’t 
care.” 

Then she heard the nurse’s voice on the telephone— 
“Dr. Davis—I must speak to him at once—oh, doctor, 
Miss Hastings talking—can you come at once to the 
Royden baby? I don’t know—all right an hour ago— 
respiration very fast—yes, doctor; no, doctor—” 
Veronika, twelve days a mother, jumped out of bed 
and ran to the next room. In her beautiful bassinet, 
against the gay light pink of ribbons, her baby’s face 
looked blue, and a tiny, pallid fist hit the air as she 
wailed. Frantically Veronika seized the infant, holding 
her tightly, talking wildly as if the child could understand 


244 A Handmaid of the Lord 

the demand that she fight life and death, and in that 
quick instant fearful that this was judgment on her in¬ 
gratitude to life and the wonder of birth and her invoca¬ 
tion of death. 

“I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it,” she kept saying 
fiercely. 


THE THIRD BOOK 





THE THIRD BOOK 

CHAPTER I 

ERONIKA hesitated outside of Thorley’s. In the 



* window were chrysanthemums, great yellow ones, 
beautifully curled. She saw them instantly in a comer 
of her drawing-room in a tall vase of black luster. Of 
course she could go over to Sixth Avenue and get them 
cheaper, but that would not be quite the same. Part 
of the charm was buying them here where things were 
redolent of luxury. 

Stewart’s bill here must be enormous. Still he’d think 
nothing of it and after all, now the armistice was signed, 
money should be easy. If they could make so much 
money in war time, peace times should mean that things 
would be still better. 

She stood pondering the chrysanthemums for some 
time, for the ease of extravagance had never come to her, 
not even in these last years. Three years of New York 
and of intimate acquaintance with Lily’s wardrobe had 
given her an air of sophistication. Her suit, bordered 
and collared with soft brown fox fur, was just the right 
length to be smart, and the plain felt cloche pulled down 
over her ears gave the last touch to her slim figure. She 
looked, like so many well-dressed women on the Avenue, 
about twenty years old, with her hat on. Such lines as 
had come in her face were well concealed. 

Going in at last she ordered six chrysanthemums and 
was sorry then that she had spent the ten dollars. There 


247 


248 A Handmaid of the Lord 

were other places where she could have used the money. 
But then, she reflected, it wasn’t as if she really had the 
money. This was one of the bills Stewart would pay 
when he had a cleaning-up day and ten dollars more or 
less wouldn’t make any difference. She wouldn’t have 
the ten dollars in cash to use anyway and that was one 
of the reasons why it was easier and more comfortable 
to buy on Fifth instead of Sixth Avenue. 

On Fifth Avenue she had charge accounts. 

She was walking home, after seeing Lily’s new play 
in matinee. She had been there on the opening night, 
of course, but it was hard to form impressions in the 
midst of the smiling noisy crowd of Lily’s friends in 
the box and with necessity upon her of being nice to 
Mr. Henderson for Stewart’s sake as well as Lily’s. But 
this afternoon she had gone alone and watched Lily 
as she charmed stout suburban matrons and crowds of 
schoolgirls in for a week-end and travelers from the 
Middle West. It was a delightful play and Veronika 
was so glad that Lily had it—a wisp of pathos, the 
foam of some author’s fancy, which gave Lily the chance 
to sing three delightful songs and reveal a delightful 
talent for acting, and it was due to be one of the great 
successes in a year when people were tired of being emo¬ 
tionally keyed up and wanted to be pleased. Veronika 
was glad that Lily was out of musical comedy. Half- 
naked girls still distressed her, though she had learned 
not to talk about the distress. This new vehicle for 
Lily, this bit of pathetic daintiness, was just right. 

It s charming,” she had told Lily afterward, seeking 
her in her dressing-room and asking her to have tea 
somewhere. “I want to see it again and again.” 

“How they are falling for it!” answered Lily. “It’s 


A Handmaid of the Lord 249 


the sentimentality, of course. People love to see some 
one get in trouble just enough so that they aren’t har¬ 
rowed up by it.” 

“You do the girl beautifully when she’s at her wit’s 
end in the second act. Even I felt sobby.” 

Lily laughed. 

“I try to remember the way you looked on your wed¬ 
ding morning, when you couldn’t decide whether to get 
married or not.” 

The smile went out of Veronika’s eyes. 

“But I didn’t look like that. I was in earnest. My 
nose was doubtless red!” 

“We amend the details,” laughed Lily. “Paul Hender¬ 
son calls it an exceedingly graceful performance. I 
asked him if he would mind letting my press agent 
quote him—‘Steel Magnate calls Lily Pearse’s perform¬ 
ance exceedingly graceful’ with a little inset picture of 
him in the ad. He thought for a minute I meant it.” 

“Stewart says that you have him where you want 
him.” 

“Is Stewart sure that he knows where I want him ?” 

Lily would not come to tea. She said she had a couple 
of people dining with her early before the play and 
that she must not eat too much. So Veronika had eaten 
alone in Maillard’s and watched people and had not been 
especially sorry to be alone, for she had much to think 
about. Besides she liked to 'be free from any social 
intercourse and to watch other people have it. Then she 
could imagine that she was any one she wished to be, 
and that was still her favorite diversion. But now, as 
she directed her way toward Park Avenue, she was very 
definitely Mrs. Stewart Royden with her mind on her 
two children, her husband and the dinner that she and 


250 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Stewart were giving to-morrow night. When she got 
as close as this to her home she was always panicky 
about Elinor. She had always been that way about 
Elinor ever since she had her infant spasms. Now, at 
three, she was very beautiful, but almost eerily delicate. 
Too full of temperament, Stewart thought, though he 
adored his daughter. The boy was not like that. Even 
at a year and a half he was a miniature Stewart, equable 
and sturdy. 

It was a tribute to Stewards growing fortunes that 
he had taken a house after his son was born. 

“Em tired of apartments,” he had said. “Let’s have 
a house,” and with her interest in homes at high pitch, 
Veronika had sought for one. She had found one she 
wanted, a pink brick one at Thirty-first Street, in be¬ 
tween two low brown stone houses, all light and re¬ 
modeled, but Stewart had at the last moment had an 
excellent offer from a friend of his to lease a larger house 
just off Park Avenue. 

Veronika had known when she first saw the house 
that it was not beautiful, but a certain grandeur, un- 
escapably inherent in its size, had gratified her and she 
was impressed by the mere fact of the house. So she 
had given up the pink brick one at Stewart’s suggestion 
that he thought it would be valuable for him to make a 
deal with the important owner of the house. As far as 
Veronika could see, no particular benefit had yet come 
from the connection and it had cost enormously to fur¬ 
nish the place, but Veronika took great pride in having a 
house in the city of apartments. That in itself was distin¬ 
guished and she knew that her furnishings were distin¬ 
guished too—the formal little reception room with French 
blue brocade on its rosewood chairs and sofa—the long 


A Handmaid of the Lord 251 

drawing-room with unpolished oak woodwork and cream 
silk hangings. 

They had been in the house for a year, but the bill 
for the hangings still greeted her on the hall table. She 
knew it by the yellow envelope, and she did not want 
to open it. She had its duplicates upstairs. Stewart had 
assured her that he had telephoned that firm and that 
he had been assured unlimited credit, that the bills were 
an office formality. But a little depression came over 
Veronika as she looked at it. 

Well, she'd had these panics before and Stewart al¬ 
ways reassured her. Perhaps it was that she still wasn't 
tuned to the way people lived on a large scale. She 
picked up the evening paper and started up the staircase. 
She loved the staircase for its silence. In Valhalla there 
had been no carpet on the stairs and in Westover thin 
strips of ingrain carpet. These stair rugs were thick 
and silent. As she walked she glanced at the headlines, 
a habit contracted during the years of war. Now that 
the armistice was signed and the columns filled with 
peace bickerings and local tragedies she found little to 
interest her. Then a word struck her eye and she stopped 
and read and read again, her face flushing deeply. 

She had heard of that competition, open to any archi¬ 
tect, for the Globe Building. But Saul had won it! Saul 
whom she had not seen since her marriage. Saul whose 
love she still hung on to romantically when Stewart's 
lacked comfort. Saul had won fifty thousand dollars 
and an international reputation. He was in headlines. 
She was exalted for a moment, reading the paper im¬ 
portantly, then her spirit sank. He was nothing to her. 
She was Stewart's wife and she had taken it for granted 
that she moved in a world inaccessible to Saul. Then 


252 A Handmaid of the Lord 

she thought—fifty thousand dollars—what a lot of 
money!—and was instantly ashamed. He had offered 
her a hundred dollars once. Because he now commanded 
five hundred times as much, was there a difference in 
her feeling? Of course there was not. 

In the nursery the children were being undressed be¬ 
fore an open fire. It always seemed incredibly delight¬ 
ful to Veronika that her children undressed before this 
warm fire in their own lovely, light-colored room. In 
Valhalla she and Lily had sometimes gone down to the 
kitchen to dress in front of the open oven—the only 
warm room in the house on winter mornings. Veronika 
knew what warmth meant to children—warmth, light 
and peace—and she hugged the thought to her that her 
children were getting those things. 

Elinor was enchanting to-night. She looked like Lily, 
but not as Veronika remembered Lily as a child. Lily 
as a child had been fearful, like the other Pearse chil¬ 
dren. But Elinor had Lily’s beauty with a spirit behind 
it which Veronika never said was her own, but which 
had been kin to her since the child had begun to talk. 
She knew what the child was thinking, knew what things 
hurt her, instantly. Young Stewart was a plaything 
yet, a fine possession, but Elinor already made her mother 
suffer a little. 

She took the child on her lap and sat down in a rock¬ 
ing-chair before the fire, cuddling her tiny slippered feet. 
Comfort stole through her. In this room she always 
loved her husband deeply as the giver of all these things, 
as the only one who could share the joy of them with 
her. Now she thought easefully of Saul. She was glad 
he had won that money. She hoped it would make him 
a great figure in the world. She and Stewart would go 


A Handmaid of the Lord 253 

on, with greater success, and some time they would 
all meet—Saul would see Elinor—that was Stewart com¬ 
ing down the hall now. 

He kissed her and she got the faint odor of tobacco 
and liquor. 

“Had a good day?” she asked. 

“Seen the paper?” he countered. 

“About Saul?” 

“Saul who?” 

“He won the prize for the Globe Building—fifty thou¬ 
sand.” 

She passed the paper to him and he scanned it. 

“Good stuff—that’s your old flame, isn’t it? Maybe 
you’d have done better to have taken him, Ronny.” 
Stewart laughed. He didn’t mean it. The competition 
with Saul was quite dead and he saw Veronika as very 
completely his wife. But Veronika, in whom the memory 
of the competition for her favor had revived, was an¬ 
noyed. She did not answer. 

Stewart put down the paper and talked over the heads 
of the children, who were growing clamorous. 

“I wasn’t thinking of that news. It’s more important. 
Henderson’s got pneumonia.” 

“No—” She read the creased paragraph he pointed 
out. Henderson was the background of their living. 
“How dreadful! Did you see him?” 

“No—nobody allowed. I shall try again in an hour or 
so.” 

They checked their further comment because of the 
nurse and gave all their attention to the children. The 
children and the firelight—the closed door made them 
both feel secure and happy for the moment. But all 
through dinner Stewart’s face was grave. He had his 


254 A Handmaid of the Lord 

mind on Henderson, his friend, and on the meaning of 
Henderson in his life as well. Veronika knew. 

“Of course he won’t die,” she encouraged him. 

“You can’t tell about pneumonia.” 

“It’s awful, isn’t it—but—if he should, what would 
it mean, aside from the personal grief ?” 

“There’d be hell to pay.” 

“Wouldn’t things just go on?” 

“Things would—but would I? I’m Henderson’s man 
and the rest of the crowd are gunning for me just be¬ 
cause I am. I’d have to fight for my life especially with 
the European contracts nullified by the armistice.” 

“Are they?” she asked, horrified. 

“Repudiated the whole bunch.” 

“But they can’t!” 

“Can’t they? They can tie those things up with liti¬ 
gation for so long that we’d be damned glad to get out 
of it, taking our loss.” 

Veronika was silenced. She had learned to translate 
success into periods of expenditure, to translate reverses 
into terms of bills unpaid, and absorption on Stewart’s 
part. 

“Isn’t Mr. Dunn a friend of yours?” 

“Dunn doesn’t approve of any one who takes a drink.” 

“Then why take it?” 

“We needn’t go into that, need we?” asked Stewart 
coldly. 

They relapsed into a rather chill silence. 

“I don’t think Lily knows. She was laughing about 
Mr. Henderson this afternoon.” 

“Damn it all. Why didn’t Lily marry him a month 
ago ?” 

“Why should Lily marry him if she doesn’t want to?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 255 

Veronika despised this cementing of a business situa¬ 
tion with Lily’s relation to Henderson. It had come 
about naturally enough to be sure. Henderson was de¬ 
voted to Lily, more deeply so than he had ever been to 
any one, so Veronika had been told. Still to use that 
as a reason for being sure of Henderson’s backing was 
humiliating. 

“You don’t seem to be worrying much about poor Hen¬ 
derson personally.” 

Stewart looked at her angrily. 

“I am,” he said shortly. “I’m immeasurably dis¬ 
tressed. But Henderson is more than a life. He’s a 
business structure. He’s my life too. In a couple of 
years I could play it alone. But now—oh, my God, why 
didn’t he trust me a little further? Why didn’t he give 
me some real power?” 

He pushed his chair back and went into the drawing¬ 
room, lighting a cigarette nervously. Veronika followed. 
She felt intolerably idle. There was nothing she could 
do. She was not really disturbed about Henderson, but 
she hated to see Stewart get so nervous and excited. He 
had been drinking that afternoon. It showed in his 
excitability. He was often like that lately. It shook 
her faith. Stewart was the anchor of the family. If 
he was useless, what could they do with all this luxury 
which surrounded them like so much strangeness ? Stew¬ 
art had to be in control. 

She had meant to take up the matter of the payment 
for the hangings to-night. 

Now how could she? 

She tried to change the current of his thought. 

“Lily’s play is good. I saw it again to-day. It wears 
well.” 


256 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Did you?” He tried to meet her comment and from 
the difficulty of the attempt she guessed at the serious¬ 
ness of his situation. 

“I wish I could help!” she cried. 

He didn’t want that kind of emotional sharing. 

“Now leave it to me, it will be all right,” he put her 
off hastily. 

He measured the room with his slow walking up and 
down. She didn’t want to sit looking at him and left 
him alone. She had learned to do that now. She had 
learned so much about Stewart. She had known him as 
a patient admirer and a determined lover, she had found 
him as a husband and then, gradually, she had discovered 
that she had to live with a man to whom being an ad¬ 
mirer and lover and husband were only side issues much 
of the time. She had to find out about Stewart Royden, 
who was Henderson’s confidential man and who was 
changing from being a promising, deferential, young fel¬ 
low into an ambitious financier, who had friends and 
enemies. These things made life very busy and com¬ 
plex. 

She too was distressed by Henderson’s pneumonia. 
Fear of catastrophe came over her and she felt that the 
housemaid, turning down the bed in her room and ad¬ 
justing satin coverlets, knew all about it. The luxury 
of her house frightened her and angered her with Stew¬ 
art. It was no use having luxury if you couldn’t make 
it real, if it had to be founded on such shifting sand that 
the death of your patron made the whole structure fall. 
She thought, I married Stewart so that things would 
be more stable. 

But all the time, as she analyzed him a little more 
pitilessly than she could have done several years before, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 257 

she was hurt because he was pacing up and down in the 
drawing-room and was threatened. He shouldn’t worry 
so. They’d had several bad things happen lately, but 
after all luck had to turn. Luck would turn, probably 
just the next day. She went downstairs again and sat 
down on the arm of Stewart’s chair. 

“Look here, Stewart, whatever it is, let’s just meet it. 
There can’t be anything so very dreadful except that I’m 
sorry for poor Mr. Henderson alone, ill, without any 
wife or children. You’ve done wonderfully and you can 
find a way out, I’m sure.” 

Stewart laid his head on her breast. 

“You’re right, dear. You’re always right, and good.” 
He relaxed a little and Veronika took soft pride in it. 
Deftly she took up the responsibility as Stewart laid it 
down, and planned how to best set things in order if 
Henderson did die and they had to retrench greatly. 
She wished she hadn’t ordered those chrysanthemums. 


CHAPTER II 


i 

pAUTJ HENDERSON had died. The newspapers 
carrying feature stories were scattered now, two 
months ago. His will had been probated, a magnificent 
will made some four years before, taking just account 
of every one to whom he was or had been related, taking 
care of charities of which he had been a patron, a fair, 
wise and sane will. As Stewart said bitterly once, the 
money might have all been Lily's. But it was not Lily’s, 
who, after all, did not need it—nor was any of it Stew¬ 
art’s. His own relation to Henderson, a patronage based 
on current favors, had become utterly worthless except 
as it had gained him certain entries which he must now 
fight to maintain. Stewart was ready to fight. Only 
Veronika noticed the threads of gray that came into his 
hair. The rest of his business and personal associates 
saw him only as a little graver since Henderson had died, 
but holding his head up and assuming that his relations 
with Consolidated Steel would be the same as before. 

Henderson’s death had come at an ugly time. With 
the repudiation of the steel contracts by the warring coun¬ 
tries, and the difficulty of pressing claims while the whole 
world was rejoicing in cessation of war and the foreign 
nations could put off any claims on the plea of readjust¬ 
ment first, Stewart’s great service, the getting of the 
contracts, had become nullified. It could not be denied 
that he had shown skill, but there was no longer any tan- 
258 


A Handmaid of the Lord 259 

gible result to show. A period of suspension had come 
over most industries and every one waited to see what 
the times would be like. Stewart’s extremely large salary 
as head of the export division began to be questioned. 
That salary had, during the war, been swelled by bonuses 
and by percentages on contracts. It was all stopped. 
That could have been weathered if there had been no 
division of feeling in regard to Stewart. But he had 
come upon the scene suddenly, and been too well paid. 
David Dunn, new head of the board of directors and a 
tremendous purist, did not like Stewart. In Dunn’s mind 
Stewart belonged distinctly to the rather deplorable side 
of Henderson’s private life. He had heard that Hen¬ 
derson wanted to marry Stewart’s sister-in-law, an ac¬ 
tress. That stamped the relationship. Stewart played 
as deftly as he could, during these days, the old and sound 
Westover connection, but it was late. David Dunn had a 
mind as inflexible as his steel products, and once he had 
been offered a drink in Stewart’s office. Stewart, whose 
spirits had been high that day, had forgotten Mr. Dunn’s 
large contribution to the Anti-Alcohol Fund. 

Dunn humiliated Stewart. He saw that his salary 
was cut, which was perhaps justifiable because of the de¬ 
flation of business. But he sent Clarkson, his personal 
attorney, abroad to negotiate the matter of the contracts 
which had been broken, and Stewart was left in New 
York, infuriated because he knew that he could pull more 
out of the wreck than Clarkson could, and also because 
the thing approximated an insult which he did not dare 
resent publicly. He did talk to people about it and found 
them sympathetic and willing enough to tell him that no¬ 
body could work with Dunn who was an old tyrant and 
stubborn. But beyond sympathy nobody seemed to have 


260 A Handmaid of the Lord 

much to offer. The wise men of prominence whom he 
knew were already conscious of a great period of re¬ 
trenchment which must come, of a bad autumn and a con¬ 
fused winter ahead in Wall Street and they knew they 
must get together on a single cry of normalcy and econ¬ 
omy. 

Stewart’s rise had been coincident with the war. So 
it met with much distrust. Henderson no longer lived 
to endorse his notes or to extend a personal loan if neces¬ 
sary. He could expect no favors from the Henderson 
estate. For the first time in a year Stewart began to 
withdraw his eyes from a future that was brilliant and 
take stock of his present position. He, who had been 
well-to-do in Westover, had been living in New York on 
a scale which presupposed an income three times what his 
was, even before his salary had been cut. He knew 
there were people waiting to see what he would do. He 
knew that he had been picked for slaughter. 

All this sifted through the walls of the house off Park 
Avenue—not in a day or a week, but over a period of a 
couple of months. The question of ready money stood 
like a ghost between Veronika and her husband. Always 
he knew that she wanted to ask him for it and always 
she knew that he wanted her not to ask. 

After a few months there came a better period. 

Stewart came home one night in his old insouciant 
way. He tossed the baby and told Elinor stories and 
caressed his wife as if he was not afraid to kiss her. 
Under her plate at dinner she found a folded blue slip. 
It was a check for two thousand dollars. 

“Stewart—how can you afford it?” 

Oh, that’s all right,” he said, “things are looking up. 
They aren’t going to be nearly as bad as I thought. Pay 


A Handmaid of the Lord 261 

the servants and your more pressing bills. Don’t pay 
everything you’ve got owing, of course. Just the long¬ 
standing ones.” 

To pay those long-standing ones gave her such a great 
sense of solvency that she was exalted. She felt quite 
at peace with the world and tremendously in love with 
Stewart, who could so handle finance and protect his fam¬ 
ily. It was a long lane that had no turning. She thought 
that if you only waited your luck was bound to turn 
sooner or later. Everything would be all right. She 
even took fifty dollars out of the thousand and put in a 
savings bank account to show her complete solvency. 
Her house became doubly beautiful when Stewart told 
her that he had paid the accrued rent. She came into 
fresh possession of it. 

In those days so much of the temper of their married 
life was utterly dependent on Stewart’s financing. It 
came now and then to Veronika’s mind that they were 
happy or not according to Stewart’s check book and that 
shocked her. But it was not always when they were sure 
that they could cover the month’s expenses that they were 
closest. There were days of black depression and nights 
when Stewart did not sleep well and turned to Veronika 
sometimes like a fretful child for comfort. She learned 
how to give comfort too with her grave generalizations 
about living, her quaint blend of philosophy and super¬ 
stition and religion which helped to pass the hours of 
worry. 

She became wise about Stewart’s temperament, about 
his failures and the reasons for his failures. But mostly 
life revolved about money. If there had been money on 
this or that occasion, so much could be accomplished. 
There were so many pitfalls of extravagance into which 


262 A Handmaid of the Lord 

one fell by not having money enough to be economical, 
for economy presupposed money on hand and Stewart 
and Veronika dealt largely with credit. It was a hard 
game to play and there were times when Veronika could 
not quite see why it was so difficult to play a simpler one. 

Possibly it was partly because of Stewart's pride, but 
also it was because he saw that his only chance consisted 
in not letting the people who were already waiting to 
smile at his bankruptcy see it. He knew things must 
change. It was a phenomenally bad winter. If they 
could get through the next few weeks—it was always the 
immediate period which seemed the worst. 

From the midst of her own world, in which even her 
social activity was founded on financial strategy, Ver¬ 
onika had glimpses of Lily's so different one. Lily was 
absorbed, but very decent in those days. If she had 
known people who could have helped Stewart she would 
have made use of them, but her circle that winter was 
not one which included any one like Paul Henderson. 
She was “playing with young ones," she said. She made 
a point of asking Veronika to such parties as she thought 
would be amusing, and it was at one of these given by a 
smart collector of celebrities that Veronika met Saul 

Her first feeling, when she saw him in the room which 
she and Lily were entering, was that he had not changed 
at all. She had expected prosperity to make more im¬ 
pression on him, but he looked as he always looked, long 
and lank and carelessly dressed. So unchanged was he 
that Veronika wished that she too looked the same and 
did not show any marks of life. 

Some one tried to introduce her. 

“I know Mrs. Royden," said Saul quietly. “How are 
you, Ronny?" 


A Handmaid of the Lord 263 

“How do I look?” 

“A faint smugness of prosperity,” he told her. 

The old Saul had not talked like that. She countered 
smartly and hated her crisp, semi-humorous, little sen¬ 
tences. 

“My wife's here,” said Saul. “I’d like you to meet 
her.” 

Veronika had not known he was married. He brought 
up a slender woman, older than Veronika, whose face 
was marked by sharp clarity and honesty. 

“This is Mary Bennett—my wife.” 

One of those women who kept their own names. 

Mary Bennett looked Veronika over. It was clear that 
she knew instantly what Veronika had been to Saul and 
measured her fitness to have been so much. Saul had 
probably told her. “She wouldn’t marry me—married 
money.” 

That was how she appeared against the plain tailored 
dress of Mary Bennett—as if she had married money. 
Her fur coat, Stewart’s gift of a year ago, was redolent 
of luxury—her velvet dress. 

“Yes,” repeated Saul, teasingly, “prosperity’s made you 
a little smug.” 

“But you’re prosperous too.” 

“I—oh, no. Mary and I have to live on that award 
all our lives. I never want to earn any more.” 

He was honest. He didn’t want to be rich and neither 
did his Mary Bennett. She was jealous of Mary Ben¬ 
nett, not because she was married to Saul, but because 
she and Stewart harassed themselves and these two didn’t. 
Of course they had no children. 

They talked for half an hour, and she knew that her 
talk reeked of the kind of thing she didn’t want to appear 


264 A Handmaid of the Lord 

—the smart New Yorker’s life just as her looks were 
that of the smart New Yorker. Saul discounted such 
people entirely. If he had not forgotten that he had ever 
held her in his arms he certainly had lost all desire to 
do so again. That made her lonely, as if something 
precious which she had treasured had been taken out of 
its careful wrappings and fallen to pieces before her eyes. 
The strange thing was that they both admired Lily. They 
liked Lily’s play. They felt that Lily’s beauty and Lily’s 
charm and ability commanded respect. Veronika guessed 
that Mary Bennett could have understood it if her hus¬ 
band had cared for Lily, but that she could not under¬ 
stand his past feeling for Veronika. She caught the 
whimsical, not-at-all jealous look Saul’s wife gave her. 

It seemed all wrong. When she got home she planned 
a theater party with Stewart alone, for it was an even¬ 
ing without engagements. But she found a message from 
Stewart that he would not be home for dinner. That 
meant, she knew, that he was probably dining with some 
men and that there would be too much liquor. It wasn’t 
as if Stewart was a drunkard. But she hated having to 
deal with moods that were half-alcoholic and therefore 
unreal. 

She let Elinor dine with her in order to put uncomfort¬ 
able thoughts out of her head. Elinor’s bright head 
above her scarlet wool dress was lovely to look at and her 
little ripples of thought danced over Veronika’s dark 
mood. Elinor adored her mother and she had the gift 
of demonstration. As she talked Veronika dreamed of 
the life she would live with Elinor and make for Elinor 
and little Stewart, keeping everything beautiful and or¬ 
derly. She banked those thoughts up as a barricade 
against the fear that this wife of Saul’s was handling life 


A Handmaid of the Lord 265 


better than she herself was. When this harassing winter 
was over, doubtless she would have her chance. 

Thoughts of Saul and Mary Bennett and Lily kept 
pressing on her mind. She could not lay the thought of 
them away because she did not know where to put it. 
It was hard to understand why they seemed to live lives 
so much less troublous than hers. Her very caring to 
live well seemed to block her, her relentless effort to take 
pleasure in frustration. When she tried to work out her 
respect for her life and for the lives of her children in 
practical values she appeared a silly ambitious woman try¬ 
ing to live on a scale too expensive for her husband. For 
Lily attainments synchronized with her dreams. But 
never so with Veronika. Always the attainment was a 
caricature of the dream. 

Her God was still a giver, whether it was giver of 
money or love or peace or virtue and he seemed to fail 
her very often. 

She put Elinor to bed herself, sending the nurse away, 
and tried to find peace in the soft warmth of the life of 
her child. But Elinor drifted off to sleep and with sleep 
her soul and mind became remote from her mother’s. 
Shivering, Veronika went down to the library and to her 
desk, trying to find interest in invitations, in the game of 
securing and giving invitations which she was learning 
to play. Invitations and bills—her desk was piled with 
them and they meant, she knew, the same thing. They 
revolved around money, and the whole of the social life 
she saw was based on money, or on erotic impulses, which 
was worse. 

Stewart would come after a while, with a mind slightly 
fuddled that couldn’t help her. But she wanted him to 
come, for she knew that he loved her, in his fashion, and 


266 A Handmaid of the Lord 

without him novr there seemed no reason for anything. 
His battle was hers and she must fight it. She was a 
master hand at keeping the semblance of order and that 
was what he wanted now. At least it was that which 
Veronika thought was his need. 

2 

The New Year came, New Year’s day itself, that glori¬ 
ous chance for division in kinds of fortune, for breaking 
the chain of incidents which held one to unpleasant mem¬ 
ories. Veronika went to church on New Year’s morn¬ 
ing and following the service absently, blocked out her 
plan before the Lord. She would do what was best and 
what was fitting and she expected in return certain bene¬ 
fits, those of happiness and a modicum of success. And 
health, she added, but not with unction, for after all 
health had never been denied her and sickness was a 
trouble with which the Pearses held little combat. 

Stewart and she had been at a gay party the night be¬ 
fore, a watch night of dancing, and, after having gone to 
several dull hotel and cabaret entertainments, dull be¬ 
cause of the lack of variety in amusement and the obvi¬ 
ousness of the secret drinking, the last hours had been 
spent in a house where the drinking was not at all secret 
and the talk increasingly loose. It had been a party given 
by a man whom Stewart was cultivating at the moment, 
a young man of fortune—with the unwholesome canni¬ 
ness of the miserly rich. Veronika suspected him of not 
playing fair with Stewart and she was unhappy because 
in the course of their amusement-seeking Stewart had 
spent a great deal of money. Despite the fact that they 
had gone to bed very late she was up early, for she 


A Handmaid of the Lord 267 


wanted to break away from the extravagant evening, to 
start the New Year right and wholesomely and there rang 
in her head her mother's adage that ‘'whatever you do 
on the jirst day of the year you’ll be doing all year.” 

Veronika marked that New Year’s day as a symbol. 
For Stewart felt the zest of the imaginary new chance 
with her. He had come to share a little in those dreams 
of hers—he needed their sustenance. He bought her a 
corsage of violets and carried it home himself. In the 
afternoon she wore it with her latest costume which was 
unpaid for of course, but had come from an expensive 
house which was used to patrons who kept it waiting for 
payment. They left their car at home and walked as 
they made calls on some of their friends. Every one 
seemed so glad to see them that their spirits mounted 
high. Stewart was his old easy and companionable self 
that afternoon, with the shrewd intensity relaxed in his 
face, and Veronika was so full of eagerness.to please that 
the self-consciousness which always checked her ap¬ 
proaches, dwindled to nothing. 

Several of their friends were entertaining and in some 
of the houses orchestras were already playing for danc¬ 
ing. But Veronika and Stewart did not stay long any¬ 
where. 

“Why don’t we call on the Dunns?” asked Veronika, 
ardent in her search for symbols of stability. 

“That’s an idea,” said Stewart, “why don’t we? Let’s 
give them the shock of their lives. You’ve met his wife ?” 

“Yes—she asked me to come to see her some day.” 

The Dunns lived in an unfashionable district in a house 
with a tall iron fance around it. 

“Symbolic fence,” said Stewart, grinning. 

Both he and Veronika were slightly embarrassed, but 


268 A Handmaid of the Lord 

the Dunns were home and glad to see them, clearly 
pleased that these young people sought them out on New 
Year’s day. They were received in a long room with 
calf skin “sets” of law books on the lower shelves of the 
bookcases and Scott and Dickens and Thackeray up 
above them. Mrs. Dunn, grave, high-collared, stiff with 
resistance to the unpleasant manners of an age she dis¬ 
liked, and from presiding over charitable committees, was 
gracious and her husband did not seem formidable to 
Veronika. He was a little man with a disproportionately 
imposing head and shoulders, slightly pompous. Watch¬ 
ing him Veronika understood how the easy grace of Paul 
Henderson, so handsome and charming even in late mid¬ 
dle age, must have irritated Dunn. Dunn had no grace. 
His manners labored a little. Stewart was not his kind 
of person. Veronika could see that and see why Stew¬ 
art’s problem was difficult. 

“Three children ?” asked Mrs. Dunn. 

“Two,” smiled Veronika. 

Don’t you find New York a difficult place to bring 
them up?” 

“I feel very incapable of bringing them up at all,” 
laughed Veronika. 

You should not, said Mrs. Dunn. “A good mother 
and simple surroundings are all that children need. A 
good mother who teaches them the fear of the Lord.” 

It was on the tip of Veronika’s tongue to say that she 
did not want them to fear the Lord, but she repressed 
that and looked acquiescent. Stewart who neither feared 
the Lord nor tried to use Him changed the subject. At 
least so he tried. But Mr. Dunn could not be swerved. 
He swung into discourse on what he called “this day and 
age. He spoke of approaching financial stringency, of 


A Handmaid of the Lord 269 

the way the country would be obliged to return to a period 
of economy and rigid thinking—that nothing else could 
save the country. He told with some unction of the fail¬ 
ure of a great motion picture concern which could not 
get its bankers to carry it any longer. 

“But doesn’t that put a lot of people out of work?” 
asked Veronika. 

“They will find more useful employment perhaps,” said 
Mr. Dunn. 

Stewart nodded, in consonance with the solemn head- 
wagging of his host. 

“Terrific waste in that industry.” 

“Exorbitant prices paid for the spread of indecency,” 
said Mrs. Dunn. She was, she told Veronika, on a Com¬ 
mittee for the Establishment of a Rigid Censorship and 
the Promulgation of Educational Films. The title came 
without humor from her. 

But that passed. The Dunns having testified to their 
morality, grew more expansive. They talked of their 
pleasure and of their home in California, where they went 
after Christmas when Mr. Dunn was free. Veronika had 
a vision of a smugly sunny place where the Dunns win¬ 
tered in stiff white clothes. 

A maid brought tea and lit the electric lamps. 

“I must go home to my children before they’re asleep,” 
said Veronika rising. 

The Dunns liked that. They both smiled at her and 
suddenly looked like a lonely old man and woman. Ver¬ 
onika shook hands with them rather warmly. 

“Poor old things,” she said to Stewart, when they were 
walking toward their house again. 

“Poor old millions,” said Stewart. “Nice person to 
work with, isn’t he?” 


270 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“But simple,” said Veronika—“just a rich old bigot” 

“Well, it was a good thing to do, to call on him any¬ 
way,” Stewart went on; “they liked it.” 

“Of course.” 

“You’re lots of help, Ronny, dear.” 

Her hand went out from her furred cuff to rest on his 
arm. 

“I try.” 

They went along through the dusky evening. The 
streets, aglow with motors, the towering beauty of the 
buildings, all thrilled Veronika. She felt closer to Stew¬ 
art than she had felt in months, and it was good to be 
close in the midst of this beauty. For the hour the world 
belonged to her and Stewart. There was satisfied en¬ 
deavor after that call on the Dunns and there was spirit 
and glory in this dusky New Year’s night. Everything 
would come right. At home the children would be wait¬ 
ing for them. They talked of their plans and felt vastly 
superior to the Dunns. Stewart felt sure that the New 
Year was going to bring him prosperity. All he asked, 
he told Veronika, was a fighting chance. He told her 
something of the forces that were arrayed against him, 
not too much, for Veronika did not understand the terms 
of business when they grew technical. Dunn would have 
to turn to him, for he needed Stewart’s type of mind. 
“I’m only thirty-eight, Ronny, dear. That’s pretty young 
for a fellow to make good in New York. Lots of them 
have lost two or three fortunes and made them again 
before they are fifty and finally get on their feet.” 

“So I have to give you twelve years ?” she laughed. 

“Not that long. Two years and I’ll bring you the 
earth in tissue paper.” She knew that there was rising 
in him that feeling which had been deadened lately by 


A Handmaid of the Lord 271 


worry, delight in giving her things and making her 
happy. It was the outlet for his love and she never dis¬ 
paraged it, recognizing it as something very fine. As 
they entered the hall he drew her to him in a long, pas¬ 
sionate embrace. Veronika, who so loved order in all 
things, felt that this was fitting and let her spirit soar. 
Never had the children been so entrancing as they went 
to see them that night. Veronika’s eyes sought her hus¬ 
band’s to be sure he realized the delicious magic of the 
fact that these children existed and were their own. Beau¬ 
tiful bodies—beautiful souls. 

The cook was out and Veronika herself got the supper. 
That too was delightful. There was a whole jellied 
chicken in the porcelain ice-box. She mixed salad in a 
wonderful Chinese bowl which she had found in a china 
shop one day. There were wine-colored jellies and pre¬ 
served fruit and cake with deep, soft frosting. Veronika, 
who had never lost her Valhalla delight in eating and 
was still nearly always hungry, savored her spirit through 
her appetite too. And Stewart laughed at her and in the 
candle light they were very gay and very close. 

They were amazingly happy and proud of each other, 
confident of their power over the next day and the new 
year. But when at last Stewart had fallen asleep, Ver¬ 
onika lay awake a little, hanging on to her happiness as 
if she feared that while she slept it might steal away. 


CHAPTER III 


i 

L ILY scrutinized the clothes' hanging in orderly array 
J in an open wardrobe trunk. 

“If this trunk is to be the one that goes in my cabin, 
put in the black satin dinner dress, Julie. It’s in the 
other room. Look it over for fastenings.” 

Veronika protested as the maid left the room. 

“You’ve enough clothes for a month in that cabin 
trunk.” 

“Ah, but I shan’t wear them probably. I’ve practi¬ 
cally decided to wear the black satin every night for din¬ 
ner. It’s much more clever to be seen in one thing night 
after night than to dress up like a Chicago lady going 
abroad for the first time.” 

“But you are going abroad for the first time.” 

“That’s no reason for looking like it.” 

Veronika looked at the furred cloaks, the tweed dresses, 
the soft, small, veiled hats around her. 

“How much of your life is dependent on clothes!” she 
said. 

“My form of expression,” said Lily, “just as yours 
used to be kitchen sinks in Valhalla and now is Lenox 
service plates—” 

“That’s not my form of expression.” 

“Well, you seem to be sacrificing a good deal to keep 
them.” 


272 


A Handmaid of the Lord 273 

“What do you mean ?” 

“Nothing special. You yourself were glooming about 
expenses, and Stewart does look a wreck all right.” 

“That’s not my fault,” said Veronika curtly. 

“If men get down, they can’t resist a jolly bootlegger,” 
suggested Lily. 

“I don’t know what you mean. Anyway, my mind is 
not on service plates, Lenox or crockery. I’ve more than 
that to think about.” 

Lily looked her sister over. Veronika was not at her 
best. Her eyes were tired and she was not made up at all. 

“You are having a tough time, aren’t you? The worst 
of it is that Stewart is really so clever. But just now 
you need a shampoo, a marcel, a manicure and a facial. 
Then you can meet life—” 

“Oh, don’t be silly. I don’t think I can bear it.” Ver¬ 
onika stood up. “I didn’t come in to keen about myself, 
but to see if I could help you. But I can’t. It’s going to 
be an awfully successful tour I suppose.” 

“London engagement. Mustn’t call it a tour. I’ve a 
good press agent and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be 
successful. The English are crazy over American come¬ 
dies this year.” 

“And is Lyon Duxbury going to follow you ?” 

“As he pleases. But he must not bother me. I’ll be 
far too busy to play with boys.” 

“Even boys so rich.” 

“Even so.” 

“What are you looking for, Lily?” 

“I don’t know that I’d tell if I knew,” laughed Lily. 

“We’ve none of us been very successful except you. 
The last letter I had from father sounded so broken. 
He’s getting old.” 


274 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“My dear girl, he would, you know. You can't stop 
that—" 

“And Michael—did I tell you he came to Stewart one 
day to ask for a loan?" 

Lily checked Veronika’s gloom with a gesture. 

“Don’t go over the lot. Isn’t there something I can 
do for you, Ronny? Would a couple of thousand help?" 

“No, thanks. You’re going to get that other back 
soon. I wanted to give it to you before you sailed, but 
somehow there has been such a lot of expense—’’ 

“Do forget about it. I wish you’d take a check, Ronny. 
Don’t be so self-conscious. Everybody’s broke this 
year." 

“I don’t intend to have my family supported by my 
sister," said Ronny coldly. “It’s not the way things 
should be." 

“Will you ever learn the difference between the way 
things are and the way they should be ?’’ 

Lily spoke lightly enough, but her eyes were shrewd. 
She was a mirror of poise and control which showed 
Veronika as lacking both these qualities. Obviously, just 
as she was willing to help Veronika she did not intend to 
suffer with her. Or perhaps, having no habit of suffer¬ 
ing, she found it impossible. 

“What do you mean?’’ 

“Why keep on pretending to yourself that it’s a good 
old world?’’ Lily went on, still with that lightness which 
made her remarks almost irrelevant. “It’s a mean, cut¬ 
throat world. But it’s tractable. You can manage it if 
you don’t idealize it. If you idealize it, it bluffs you 
along and knifes you when it gets the chance." 

“And where’s God?" 

“Don’t ask me.’’ Lily was in a little beyond her depth 


A Handmaid of the Lord 275 

and resented it. “Look here, old girl, cheer up. And by 
the way, if you won’t let me help you out just now you 
can do one thing. Send a little check along to Valhalla 
for me. I hate to write letters.” 

Veronika nodded. She watched Lily scratching off 
the check and wondered at that impassive generosity. If 
Lily didn’t have enough to keep herself as she wanted to 
be kept, she wouldn’t do it. But she had a surplus and 
disposed of it unemotionally. It was partly that which 
made it impossible for Veronika to take money from her. 

She said good-by. The maid had come back with the 
black dress and Lily was rapidly becoming preoccupied. 
But she put a lovely arm along Veronika’s shoulders and 
went to the door with her. 

“Take it easy, old girl,” she said, “and remember that 
Stewart needs a lot of praising and bolstering up. All 
men do. And of course if he should turn out to be a 
pretty hopeless proposition I don’t think I’d stick at it 
forever. With your religious feelings, of course a sep¬ 
aration is possible.” 

“It’s not so simple.” 

“No—I suppose not.” 

They were to be separated for at least six months, for 
Lily’s comedy was to go to London for an indefinite run 
and had been promised great success there. Lily’s de¬ 
parture, a practical business, managed by her press agent, 
a thing of photographs and just the right interviews, 
would allow no time for intimate leave-takings. Veron¬ 
ika knew that she would be there with the children to 
give just the right touch of chaperonage, but her appear¬ 
ance too would be almost public. 

“Don’t bother about my affairs,” she told Lily, though 
that was, as she knew, a formality. “Take care of your- 


276 A Handmaid of the Lord 

self. And, Lily, I think you haven’t touched bottom 
yet.” 

"It’s tops that interest me,” laughed Lily. 

It was time for Veronika to go home. She was afraid 
of her house these days. In the midst of their financial 
difficulties it seemed not to belong to her any more. It 
was the habitat of unpaid bills and worries and skirm¬ 
ishes about money. It was everything that a home should 
not be and little that it should, except as the children, un¬ 
conscious that the place was spiritless, gave it life. Stew¬ 
art avoided the house as much as he could. It was his 
blunder—on his hands for five months more, unrentable 
because of its size. Veronika never remarked, but they 
both knew, that the pink brick one she had liked would 
never have been as harassing a problem. 

It was almost better when Stewart was not at home 
these days, for Veronika again found it very hard to be 
gentle with him. He was cornered now by obligations, 
by lack of support from other men, by opposition. The 
situation had been serious at the New Year and the hope 
of New Year’s day only mirage. Now, in April it was 
approaching disaster. Veronika had felt always in the 
back of her mind that if things got too bad they could 
go back to Westover and live on the income from the 
foundry, Stewart’s first source of fortune. It had come 
to her as a hideous shock when she had been told that 
he had sold that months ago to some outsiders and that 
the money, that first two thousand he gave her, had been 
part of the proceeds. With the rest he had elaborately 
planned a coup in Wall Street and had lost it all. Now 
he was temporarily without resources and she was forced 
to witness the most amazing thing a woman can witness: 
the secret lacks of her husband coming to the surface of 


A Handmaid of the Lord 277 

his action. She had known him first as rather worldly in 
contrast with her own unsophistication—then as protec¬ 
tive, as shrewd and hard. Now there was marshaled be¬ 
fore her reluctant eyes the weaknesses she had not known 
to exist. The world, Stewart felt, owed him a living and 
he’d been damnably treated. He had been out of luck 
beginning with Henderson’s death. No one gave him a 
hearing. He had little of that feeling which was instinc¬ 
tive in Veronika, to keep up, to bear up under all and 
every circumstance and to fight hardest of all in disaster. 
He was trying to find a way out, of course, but he was 
resentful. He was beginning to admit defeat. 

Veronika could no longer bolster him up with love. 
All coquettishness had long since disappeared from her. 
She was devoted to his interests, but she was doubtful of 
him and he knew it. It hardened him against her. 

Yesterday Veronika had made one of those quiet, 
nerve-racking trips to her doctor’s office. For an hour 
she had sat in his waiting-room, her whole being alive 
with her question, wondering what the answer would be. 
She was worried at the thought of having to face another 
child-bearing. The birth itself no longer disturbed her, 
but the incapacity that went with the nine months, the 
lack of full energy when she was going to need it, and 
the expense were dreadful thoughts. She was bitter as 
she watched the women who like herself sat there in that 
crowded waiting-room, each one with a question on her 
face. Terrible faces, those which surrounded her. Out 
of them bravery and resistance had temporarily gone. 
No one knew any one else. There was no necessity for 
keeping up a bright face here and each woman seemed 
to have relaxed into her weary, secret thoughts until her 
face sagged. Tired women, they were—frightened 


278 A Handmaid of the Lord 

women, most of them suffering because they were women, 
for this physician specialized in their diseases. This was 
the story that people did not care to read—this denoue¬ 
ment of so many lives in doctor’s offices—of beaten, worn 
bodies, dragging themselves there to hear judgment. So 
many of them did not look well-to-do, which was sur¬ 
prising, for the doctor was a very expensive doctor in¬ 
deed. Veronika judged that many of them had come as 
a last resort after having tried to fight their ailments 
alone. Fear sat heavily on the room—fear and worry. 

It was humiliating. Worse than humiliating, some¬ 
how treacherous to those children at home, that she her¬ 
self should be here. She was no girl, terrified of her 
first childbirth. She knew now, knew that the game was 
worth the candle, knew that cruel as birth was, the chil¬ 
dren unconsciously tried to atone for its cruelty with 
their softness and the pathos of their helplessness. And 
they succeeded. As she had come to watch the lives of 
other people, and become more capable of understanding 
them, as she knew more of the struggles of human ma¬ 
turity, her resentment against child-bearing had gone. It 
was the best thing most women had. She saw them deny 
it, saw them running around on the streets, in the shops, 
in drawing-rooms, denying it, hunting for something 
more comfortable, more satisfactory, and, most of them, 
failing. Everywhere in New York were empty faces, 
faces which had denied themselves a look into the depths 
of pain and mystery or, having looked, had turned fear¬ 
fully away, to spend much of their lives in the devastat¬ 
ing fear that they might have to look again. 

Veronika had no sympathy for women now because 
they were exposed to motherhood. But she had come to 
see the tangle of principle and livelihood, the conflict of 


A Handmaid of the Lord 279 


feeling and income which confused most women, the 
stout, practical barriers which so often blocked fine and 
spiritual impulse. And there was no companionship pos¬ 
sible in these matters. Each woman had to go her way- 
home. 

Stewart had said— 

“That would be an awful mess just now, wouldn’t it?” 

His eyes hadn’t even met hers. 

“Seen a doctor?” 

“No.” 

“Better do that at once.” 

“You are bothered. I shouldn’t have told you.” 

“Only for you, dear. With things as they are we don’t 
want any further complications.” 

“Complications” he called it. In another circle they 
spoke of “another mouth to feed.” It meant the same 
thing. 

She was not even to be allowed to bear her children 
with her head up, she thought desolately. This sneaking 
around to doctors’ offices in the hope that she wouldn’t 
hear him verify the fear that should not be fear, was her 
part. 

He had thought she was “all right.” She resented the 
phrase as she had the uncertainty. 

It put her in a class of women whom she despised. 

When you resented things, judgments were danger¬ 
ous. Still, while she went secretly to doctors’ offices, it 
seemed unjust that Stewart should not forswear his boot¬ 
legger. 

Her beautiful hall seemed cold and dreary. 

“Where are the children, Ella?” 

The nursemaid, not a capable one any longer, passed 
her on her way upstairs. 


280 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Eiinor is coughing, Mrs. Royden." 

“Elinor ?" 

“She didn't eat her lunch. She doesn't seem quite her¬ 
self." 

The house was cold. The coal shortage had made 
itself apparent by this time, and they bought what they 
could and used electric heaters. 

“Did you keep her out too long?" 

“We went to the park and back." 

“She should never be kept out when she doesn't seem 
well at noon." 

Veronika went to the nursery. Elinor was cutting pa¬ 
pers, her face flushed and her eyes a little red. 

“Don’t you feel well, darling?" 

“Yes, mother." 

That was Elinor. She never would admit trouble. If 
she broke a toy she tried to mend it. But she was ill. 
Her mother felt that sharp, choking rise of anxiety that 
always came over her when Elinor was sick, like the mem¬ 
ory of that terrible first convulsion when the baby was 
twelve days old and Stewart was in England. Stewart 
never worried over Elinor as she did. But he had not 
seen that. He had told Veronika that she made Elinor 
delicate with fussing over her. 

Only a child’s cold. She wouldn’t call the doctor to¬ 
night. Ten dollars a call just now unless it was neces¬ 
sary seemed wicked expenditure. She would probably be 
all right to-morrow. 

Stewart came in later. He seemed a little more spirited 
than usual, but Veronika had learned to discount that. 
Even now Stewart kept on with his trick of having rich 
days and poor days. Now he had successful days and 
unsuccessful ones, but often he considered a day success- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 281 


ful when some one had given him vague encouragement 
and possibly a drink. Things were at a bad pass be¬ 
tween him and Dunn. Stewart’s position was abolished. 
Because he was a member of the board of directors of 
several of Dunn’s subsidiary companies he could not be 
ousted completely, but he knew that his standing was 
gone almost everywhere. He kept threatening to make 
new affiliations, to found his own companies, and little 
came of it but threats which bothered no one. 

“Elinor’s not well,” Veronika greeted him. 

“Child’s cold, I suppose.” 

She refused to admit that, being melancholy, though 
secretly that was what she thought. 

“Look at her, will you?” 

“Right away.” 

“What’s her temperature?” 

“Only ninety-nine.” 

“Let’s take it again,” suggested Stewart. 

It had gone up. 

“Call the doctor, Ronny, why don’t you?” 

“Ten dollars, you know.” 

“I don’t think that matters.” 

Her lip curled. “Not even if you haven’t the ten? We 
might take her to a dispensary.” 

How she hurt him! His face was livid as he turned to 
her. 

“Cali Dr. Merrian.” 

She hesitated. “I think some compresses—” 

Stewart went to the telephone himself. 

When the doctor came Elinor seemed worse. She was 
still not plaintive about it, but her talk, her restlessness 
showed her fever. She looked very fragile to her mother 


282 A Handmaid of the Lord 

with that dangerous color in her cheeks and her slim 
little arms outlined under the coverlet. 

The doctor looked at Veronika, as they left the child’s 
room. 

“I think I’d get a nurse, Mrs. Royden. ,, 

“Is she as ill as that?” 

“She’s not very ill—yet. But there’s never any tell¬ 
ing about influenza. You have to watch it night and day. 
And Elinor hasn’t reached the peak of the trouble yet.” 

Veronika put her hand to her moist forehead. 

“I’ll get Miss Hastings.” 

Miss Hastings, who had helped to bring Elinor into the 
world, came a few hours later. Veronika’s panic was 
rising, but Miss Hastings took calm control of the child 
and Elinor fell asleep. Never had she looked more pre¬ 
cious to her mother than during that first respite of sleep. 
It was not her beauty nor her grace, nor even her affec¬ 
tion, but that spirit which Veronika had somehow cre¬ 
ated and knew she was responsible for. Elinor loved 
every moment of living. From the contrast of her own 
experience her mother had known how to make life de¬ 
lightful. 

, We must keep the house <l uiet >” said Miss Hastings, 
“it’s complete rest that does the trick.” 

“You don’t think there’s danger?” 
b “Oh, no - There’s never danger if you get a flu case in 
time and keep watching it.” 

She seemed to be right. The doctor found Elinor 
somewhat better after two days. The fever had left her 
almost eerie. It excited her mind, and she talked end¬ 
lessly. Veronika bought her some yellow primroses and 
they stood on the beautifully clean little table beside her 
bed, with the game Stewart had bought and which she 


A Handmaid of the Lord 283 


was to play when she was well again. In the nursery the 
baby who was kept away from her and who was old 
enough to miss her, called for her in his stumbling baby’s 
talk. The illness seemed to make the house pleasanter. 
Woes dropped away. Veronika refused to let her mind 
dwell on anything except Elinor. Stewart had promised 
her on the first night that he would somehow take care 
of the expense, and he had said it in his old vigorous way. 

“You’re not to worry, darling. She is to have every 
possible care. Influenza is too tricky to be played with. 
And take care of yourself while you’re with her. You 
must keep your own strength up.” 

It was beautiful to be cared for like that. 

There were other lovely things. One night Elinor 
showed her first signs of appetite and Veronika brought 
up the tray herself—the tray with Mother Goose legends 
on it and one of Elinor’s own red napkins and the pewter 
bowl of milk toast. They made a game out of eating it. 

“When will I be well?” 

“Next week, darling.” 

“And then can I get up? Because there are lots of 
things in my mind to do.” 

The warm room—Elinor with all the pretty symbols 
of childhood about her, and a smile on her thin face— 
with her bathrobe of blue eiderdown around her shoul¬ 
ders, talking and then slipping a little farther down on her 
pillows with “I guess I’ll rest, mother.” 

“That’s right, precious.” 

She slept after that. There were a hundred little 
things about it all that Veronika never forgot, gracious 
little actions and looks to turn soon to instruments of tor¬ 
ture. 

Veronika had fallen asleep when Miss Hastings, a 


284 A Handmaid of the Lord 

strange wild figure in her kimono with great purple birds, 
came suddenly to her room. 

“Come/’ she said sharply, “tell Mr. Royden to get the 
doctor—quick.” 

Elinor’s breathing was suddenly sharp, sharp and la¬ 
bored. It panted and halted. Her eyes hung heavily shut, 
but at the sound of her mother’s voice she opened them. 
Veronika never forgot the look—the look that beseeched 
her and blamed her. 

“Darling,” she said, kneeling there, lifting the tired 
head in her arms, “what do you want me to do for you? 
What shall mother do?” 

But Elinor’s look seemed to blame her because she 
didn’t know. 

“Don’t do a thing to exhaust her. She must not talk,” 
said Miss Hastings in the quick professional whisper. 
She was fighting—the fighting nurse who must not stop 
for compassion or suffering. 

Between them Veronika always felt that they tortured 
Elinor—the doctor and the nurse working so desperately. 
Stewart helped. His face seemed to Veronika’s blurred 
vision to hang in space—a face which sought hers as if to 
ask again and again how much she could bear and she 
felt her eyes answer “Not that—not that—I couldn’t.” 

The infinite came into the room and into the house. 

Of the wild stream of prayers and beseechings that 
Veronika poured out in that brief hour she never remem¬ 
bered the phrasings. She only knew that she had offered 
every sacrifice, every hope, tried every prayer which had 
been taught her as efficacious. She beseeched the Mother 
of God—the Mother of God must know. She’d had 
enough sorrow. She wouldn’t put any one else through 
it. If you could get to Her. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 285 

They wouldn’t make Elinor suffer any more. Let her 
sleep. Let her rest. This sudden sinking would be tem¬ 
porary. It was not going to be serious. She had been 
as frightened as this before when she had the baby con¬ 
vulsions. Miss Hastings had got her through then. She 
was only a baby—a frail baby. A little choking baby— 
why wouldn’t they leave her alone ? 

God was real—there—doing as he pleased with them 
all. These little gestures the nurse and doctor were mak¬ 
ing were no good now. Only prayer would help—de¬ 
manding prayers. No God would dare to do a thing so 
horribly unjust. She must prove by her prayers that it 
was unjust. 

“You know how badly things have been going,” she 
explained desperately, “but it doesn’t matter. Anything 
can happen and I’ll never say a word again—anything ex¬ 
cept this. You mustn’t do it. She likes life so—she loves 
life. She’s planned what she’s going to do when she gets 
up—Blessed Mother—Blessed Mother!” 

And all the time the strange stark horror in her mind 
seemed to warn her what was coming. It was the horror 
which drove her from the room where they worked over 
Elinor, the horror which drove her back at that final 
moment when the doctor raised his head and opened his 
hands with a terrible gesture of inability. For one swift 
moment Veronika lifted her child in her arms. It was 
from her arms that life was removed. The dealing be¬ 
tween her and her God was direct. 

2 

Hush came, the gray hush which nothing could warm. 
Veronika sat beside her child. In her hand was a brush. 


286 A Handmaid of the Lord 

They let her brush the tangled hair herself. She sat very 
still. Very still, for she was only the receptacle of her 
agony and if she moved it stirred too hideously. These 
moments with Elinor had to be weighed, each one. They 
would take her away—they always took people who died 
away—even children, even little fragile children whom 
you’d sell your soul to keep, though they were like this. 
They’d take her. But before they did, there would be 
minutes, hours like this to sit beside her. Gently the 
brush caressed the hair—the lovely hair. 

She heard Stewart come into the room. He came 
every now and then, she knew, and tried to do things for 
her. As if she cared for things done to her. They talked 
from a distance of keeping up her strength. Her 
strength—her abominable strength that she couldn’t give 
her child in torture. 

“Darling”—that was Stewart speaking, “won’t you 
come now?” 

“She can’t be left alone.” 

“I won’t leave her.” 

She looked up dully at him. 

“Let me have my hour, too,” he asked, his eyes on 
the white little form. For the first time she saw his face 
clearly. It looked as if every hope had gone. So old, 
so haggard, so ill-treated. 

She stood up and his arm moved to support her. 

“Sweetheart, where do you want us to take her? 
We’ll have to decide that. A day has passed. You 
know, in Westover, the Roy dens have a place.” 

Westover—the Roydens—strange people—there was 
a Pearse place too where her grandmother and grand¬ 
father lay. The child would be welcome there. But Eli¬ 
nor didn’t belong there—or to them. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 287 


She belonged to Veronika. 

“Let me take her home,” she said, drearily. 

“Home?” 

“There’s only Valhalla,” Veronika answered. 
Stewart’s eyes looked at his wife with compassion. 
She was sorry for him that he must grieve for her as 
well as Elinor. She was all right. 

“Anything on God’s earth that will give you help shall 
be done. If you want to take her there, we’ll go.” 


CHAPTER IV 


T N her kitchen Mrs. Pearse still rattled saucepans, less 
vehemently than in the past, perhaps, just as her 
whole manner was less vehement. She was failing now. 
The energy which she had used in such vast quantities 
when she was a middle-aged woman, the energy of vitu¬ 
peration and confusion had seemed to leave her some¬ 
what limp. Her daughter-in-law, resplendent in a hat 
of vivid green straw, stood by the kitchen door, one eye 
on the perambulator which stood on the board walk. 

“How do you like my hat?” 

Mrs. Pearse eyed it inimically. 

“Why did you get the green?” 

“Because I chose,” said Peggy. 

“Poor Tom,” sighed Mrs. Pearse. 

“Poor Tom!” his wife repeated angrily. “Poor noth¬ 
ing—he’s pretty well taken care of, I guess. He’s get¬ 
ting on all right. Going to have six thousand next year.” 

“Kill himself working.” 

Young Mrs. Pearse set her lips and sucked her cheeks 
in exasperation, then evidently decided that the contro¬ 
versy was useless. 

“How is Veronika?” 

“Upstairs—she’s all right.” 

“Still taking on?” 

A look of something like disdain from the older woman 
met the curiosity of Peggy. 

“She takes it hard.” 


288 


A Handmaid of the Lord 289 

“Her husband hasn’t come on in a long while, has he ?” 

“I guess that’s their business, Peggy.” 

“Oh, well, I suppose so. I just came over to cheer her 
up a little.” She wheeled the baby carriage around so 
that the child was shielded from the sun and came into 
the kitchen. 

The old brown walls were the same, shabby, but the 
stove and tables shone cleanly and the room was cool 
after the heat of the sun. 

“Veronika’s been busy, hasn’t she?” commented 
Peggy* looking around. 

“Look here, young lady, I do all the work around 
here.” 

“Sure you do.” 

“And you’d better look after your own kitchen. I 
wouldn’t have that hired girl of yours in my house. 
Sloppy, thieving thing she is.” 

“She’s not in your house—fortunately.” 

Veronika came out into the kitchen silently. She was 
wearing a dress of orchid crepe de chine and was slim al¬ 
most to the point of attenuation. 

“Hello, Peggy!” and to her mother—“Where are 
those raspberries?” 

“Too nice a day to stick in a kitchen. Come for a 
walk,” offered Peggy. 

Veronika shook her head. 

“Busy. I have some things to do later. Where’s your 
baby to-day?” 

“Out in the cab.” 

Veronika nodded, but did not offer to go to look at 
the baby. She did not want to and to be forced into 
saying something. She had come to hate talking. 

“How’s your husband ?” asked Peggy. 


290 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Veronika looked at her with slightly questioning eye¬ 
brows. 

“Quite all right.” 

“Hasn’t been out here in several weeks, has he?” 

“No—what of it?” 

“Nothing.” Peggy was eager for gossip, but she was 
slightly intimidated by Veronika. Veronika wouldn’t 
fight with her. She would and did snub her. There were 
so many symbols of wealth about Veronika now. It 
might be true, as Tom said to Peggy, that Stewart had 
lost every red cent he ever had and was on the rocks, 
but Veronika still looked rich and had a way of acting 
rich even when she was peeling potatoes. Or was it rich? 
Peggy was not discriminating in choice or words, but it 
struck her that rich might not be exactly the word. Con¬ 
ceited maybe— 

Ronny stood before the icebox now, planning the sup¬ 
per gravely, abstractedly. Sometimes she did not seem 
to hear what was being said to her. Peggy made a few 
more passes at her mother-in-law and departed. 

“I think I’ll get along home then.” 

“Sorry you’re not staying,” said Veronika, but still 
with that abstraction which put the other girl at arm’s 
length. She stood watching Peggy manipulate her baby 
carriage and flourish down the walk. Peggy was be¬ 
coming quite a figure in Valhalla. Tom was superintend¬ 
ent of one of the mines and doing well, so well that Peggy 
had a sealskin coat and belonged to the Woman’s Club. 

“She’s the one that gives herself a good time,” said 
Mrs. PearsC. “She knows how to take care of herself. 
That’ll be her last baby.” 

Veronika again did not seem to hear. She took a bowl 
of raspberries to a chair by the window and began to 


A Handmaid of the Lord 291 

look them over. But it was clear that her thoughts were 
in some secret chamber, hidden away, some secret cham¬ 
ber which no one could penetrate. 

“When is your husband coming on, anyway?” 

“Stewart? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe next month. 
He’s busy, he says.” 

“What’s he doing?” 

“Business.” 

“Much business! He’s after a good time like all men. 
You’re a fool to let him cavort around the country while 
you sit at home. Men always have the good time.” 

“I suppose,” agreed Veronika, lifelessly, “but nobody 
has a very good time.” 

“A man will always impose on a woman if he can. 
Look at your father!” 

“He certainly has a gift for imposition. Poor father.” 

Mrs. Pearse sniffed. 

“Poor father—always poor father. What did he 
ever do for you? Where’d all of you be to-day if it 
weren’t for me?” 

“Limbo,” answered her daughter, briefly. It was clear 
that she wouldn’t quarrel. It wasn’t that she felt a$y 
more kindly towards those around her, but quarrels dis¬ 
turbed her quiet misery. And misery was only bearable 
when it lay quiet in her like a stilled child. 

“These are ready,” she said after a minute, “and I’ll 
make a short cake when I come back.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“Driving.” 

“Why don’t you take your mother along?” 

“I will to-night. Not this afternoon.” 

“You ought to keep away from that cemetery.” 

Veronika’s whole body stiffened with sudden passion. 


292 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“That’s my own business,” she said fiercely, and 
slammed the door. 

Little Stewart was awake now. She dressed him and 
took him out with her in the car, one of the few things 
Stewart had salvaged from their New York possessions. 
There was a carload of furniture in storage downtown, 
but Veronika could not bear to look at it. She knew it 
would hurt and these days she tried to avoid hurt. The 
car Stewart had insisted on; and although at first it had 
seemed unbearable to drive, remembering how Elinor had 
looked as she sat within its plate glass windows and made 
little comments on the streets and toy shops, it had grown 
easier now. Little Stewart sat in Elinor’s place. He 
was commencing to talk now. He was happy always, not 
gay like Elinor, but cheerful and contented, something of 
a companion—all there was in Valhalla since Stewart had 
gone back to New York. 

They drove down the street which always looked like 
the street of a small town in spite of having the dimen¬ 
sions and improvements of a city, and several women 
turned to look at her, for all unknown to herself, Ver¬ 
onika of London and New York and grief and disaster 
had become a figure of romance. Along those streets 
herded with little Ford cars, with here and there an ex¬ 
pensive touring car or glistening sedan, Veronika’s lit¬ 
tle coupe of golden brown with its foreign body was 
instantly remarked, and Veronika herself with her ex¬ 
pensive cosmopolitan hats and strange, weary, distant face 
made people look at her twice. All sorts of rumors 
floated about concerning Lily and Veronika, but Veron¬ 
ika did not know that. She only knew that here in Val¬ 
halla she had a sense of being at home, identified again 


A Handmaid of the Lord 293 

with her old spirit that was at home in conflict and un¬ 
happiness. 

Past the open pit mines where the red clay roads curled, 
past the scrub woods where hideously colored fireweed 
was everywhere, Veronika drove. Stewart was on the 
lookout for cows, hailing every one he passed with a 
shout of delight. He knew where they would turn in, 
at the rather rude entrance to the cemetery, though the 
cemetery to him was only a place where his mother came 
and cut flowers. 

Veronika stopped the car and sent Stewart into the 
field to pick buttercups. The cemetery sloped into the 
field, so new and rough it was. Little sodded green 
plots were here and there, gray and white slabs of gran¬ 
ite and marble announced meaningless names. There was 
just one name in the whole place that meant anything 
to Veronika. It was engraved simply on a piece of white 
marble beside a small grave bordered with white daisies, 
“Elinor Royden—beloved daughter”—Stewart’s name, 
Veronika’s name and the pathetic dates of birth and death. 
Between the engraving separating the lines was a cross— 
a small comforting cross that Veronika had asked them 
to engrave as a symbol of the immortality in which she 
had to believe now, in which she could not help Relieving. 

She cut the daisies that fresh ones might bloom, and 
sat, as she so often did, on the marble bench Stewart had 
placed beside his child’s grave. Here, in the afternoon 
sun, with her boy picking flowers in the field close by and 
before her, below the brow of the hill on which the cem¬ 
etery was placed, the panorama of the distant fields and 
the gaping cuts in the earth that were mines, she felt 
soothed. She came sometimes at night when white moon- 


294 A Handmaid of the Lord 

light was groping among the graves—once when it was 
raining and the tombstones were all washed clean and the 
grass was incredibly green. It was always the same. 
Peace was here. It was the shore of infinity. There 
was no more to fear, no more to find out. In the end 
that was no end Veronika found range for her imagin¬ 
ings. Always before she had been trammeled or baffled, 
but here it was not so. Here, where all life was 
dwarfed and the things of life of only small importance, 
rages slipped away, fears dissolved. The agony of sep¬ 
aration remained, but that she shut in her heart. 

Here she could think of Stewart without the confusion 
of thought she always felt in her mother’s house, where 
her mother accused him of unfeeling and neglect. Stew¬ 
art’s life was not her own, Veronika knew at last. On 
the mighty occasions of her life he had met her fairly, 
shared her love, her attempts at building up a home, her 
grief. She hated to think of him now in New York. 
Without a home, without money, men went to pieces so 
quickly. She saw him with the beaten look on his face 
going in and out of hotel doors, becoming more and 
more assiduous in his search for liquor. Odd, what 
stimulus and comfort he seemed to get from that. She 
meditated on it without rancor, only seeing his face as 
it must be, desperate, aging, uncomforted, still giving her 
the best he could. Michael had gone like that. Michael 
was somewhere now, in Albany when she had last heard 
of him, living in a flat—fattened, coarsened, soured. 
Men had a beastly time. It was strange that they all 
didn’t hate women, women who made themselves so de¬ 
sirable for a little and then choked their lives and ambi¬ 
tions with disaster and pain. If Stewart had never met 
her, wanted her, perhaps he would still be a wealthy man, 


A Handmaid of the Lord 295 

still be as nonchalant as when she knew him first. But 
he didn’t hate her even now, he was pained when he 
couldn’t help her—that was all. 

She was no longer alone in the cemetery. Others had 
come, drawn by that terrible desire for physical closeness 
to their dead. Not far away a young woman in cheap 
black clothes stood beside a grave that still was raw with 
ungrassed earth. For a moment she gazed at it, then 
knelt down with an almost wild abandon, her head in 
her hands, her shoulders swaying with grief. Veronika 
glanced at her and looked away. The newness of the 
stranger’s grief hurt intolerably. That woman must go 
home and find things that were there before the person 
died, find how much more perishable people are than 
things, hate things that cannot live and so lose life. She 
must remember and remember things that happened the 
day before, remember the slow abandonment of hope, the 
moment when it left, never, never to return—Veronika’s 
hands began to clench themselves again as they always 
did when her agony came back over her in sickening 
waves. 

It was growing late in the afternoon. Little Stewart 
was tired and his step dragged as he came back to her. 
She lifted him to carry to the car, thinking that she must 
hurry if she was to get supper ready when her father 
came home. 

On the way home she met Tom with a girl and stopped 
her car to attract his attention. Tom should not go about 
with girls like that, even admitting Peggy to be difficult. 

“Can I take you home ?” she called clearly. 

He hesitated, then came, with a quick word of good- 
by to the flashy girl at his side. 

“Who’s your friend, Tom?” 


296 A Handmaid of the Lord 

Tom grinned sulkily, getting inside the car. 

“Nobody that you know.” 

“Cheap stuff!” 

He shrugged, and Veronika turned to speak to him, 
then suddenly changed her mind. He seemed to have the 
look Stewart had lately, the baffled look underneath bra¬ 
vado, the half-suppressed unhappiness, the discourage¬ 
ment covered with insolence. Her homily failed her. 
She reached out her free hand and patted his arm. 

“Poor old Tom.” 

“We’re a sad lot, aren’t we ?” 

“I don’t know,” said Veronika, “are we? With Lily 
having a wonderful career and you coming on. Isn’t it 
six thousand a year that Peggy brags about ?” 

“You’re a peach, Ronny. Always with your head up. 
You always were like that. Trying to smooth things 
over.” 

“I haven’t managed to smooth them over for Stewart.” 

“Where is that bird ?” 

She answered as she had answered her mother. 

“In New York.” 

“What’s he doing?” 

I guess he’s trying to make a living for us.” 

“He got caught pretty much between the wheels, didn’t 
he?” 

She nodded, catching her lips at the thought of the 
cruelty of it. 

Oh, he 11 come out all right. There are times when 
you think the world is going to end, but it never does. 
All during the war when I finally broke loose from Peggy 
and got in a camp, just too late to be sent abroad, I could 
have—oh, hell.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 297 


Veronika shook her head. She knew how tragic Tom’s 
attempt to get away and fight had been. She had al¬ 
ways thought him rather weak not to break away from 
Peggy even before the baby came. 

“You wanted to fight, didn’t you?” 

“Not much fun to be on the outside of a show like 
that. A thing like that—history! And me puttering 
around Valhalla.” 

“Why didn’t you just go?” 

“Oh, she had me scared—-I didn’t know much about 
this baby business. She got through all right. I could 
have gone months before I did. And even then I’d have 
seen some fighting if I’d been sent to any other camp. 
Rotten luck all around.” 

“So you try to console yourself with that cheap little 
thing I just pulled you away from?” 

He grinned again, sheepishly. “You have to have 
some fun in this burg. That girl’s all right. She’s a 
good sport. Lord, she doesn’t nag at you anyhow.” 

“You picked Peggy,” she answered. 

“And I’m sticking to her. I’ll see it through. I wish, 
though, that you’d sort of keep an eye on the baby, 
Ronny. When she gets a little older I want her to have—- 
oh, I just don’t want her to make mistakes. You and 
Lily—could show her things that Peggy can’t, no matter 
how much money I make. I want her to have a different 
view of life than Peggy has—different from the one I 
have. A few years ago you remember how big I used 
to talk? Well, I want the baby to get big things.” He 
regarded his sister. “You’re big, Ronny. You’re an 
awfully good sport even when you are up against it.” 

“I don’t want to be. I hate having people think I’m 


298 A Handmaid of the Lord 

that. I hate people who cash in on their sufferings by 
making themselves more holy. It doesn’t bring my baby 
back—” 

Embarrassed at her grief, he fell silent and she re¬ 
covered herself. Tom began to talk to the child, who 
was climbing over him. His voice took on lower tones, 
kindlier ones. He must be a good father. He likes chil¬ 
dren, thought Veronika. 

“Come home with me and let’s telephone Peggy to 
come over,” she said suddenly. “I think you’d give your 
mother a thrill. And I’m going to try sweetbreads and 
mushrooms. We never had those when we were chil¬ 
dren, did we ?” 

“We had baked beans in cans.” 

“How good they tasted! I must try some again and 
see if they still do. Tell me about the new job, Tom.” 

“Oh, the job’s all right. Big money in it some day— 
low grade ores haven’t begun to be developed yet. It 
may mean Duluth after a few years—nuts for Peggy. 
She’s mad to get to a city.” 

“Are you?” 

What does that matter if she is ?” He had his mind 
still on his wife. “This marriage problem’s an awful 
business, isn’t it?” 

Veronika, who dealt rarely in generalities, spoke 
sharply. 

“There isn’t any such thing as a marriage problem. 
It’s forced stuff—movie stuff. Peggy speaking of the 
marriage problem—getting it from movie posters and 
theatrical magazines or sex novels. There isn’t any 
marriage problem. There’s a problem of living. But if 
you can’t live well in marriage you won’t live well out 
of it.” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 299 

Tom chuckled. 

“Truly,” she said earnestly, “you know I’m right. If 
you have a trained mind you can turn it to whatever comes 
along. If you’re—oh, personally well-trained, marriage, 
riches, poverty are just accidents of existence and you 
can get along under most circumstances or with almost 
any one. All this rubbish about having your life warped 
by the fact that you are living with some one who doesn’t 
exactly please you, makes me sick. Why not see it 
through ?” 

“Father did and look at the lovely time we had,” he 
reminded her. 

“Oh, well, that was his fault too. It could have been 
managed—at the start. He was probably thinking what 
a problem marriage was while she got her head and he 
never managed to get her into control again.” 

They stopped in front of the old Pearse house. It had 
become rather an attractive house with the passage of 
time, possible because there was so much stark newness 
in Valhalla. The great cluster of creeping woodbine that 
covered the porch was just beginning to have a red or 
yellow leaf here and there. The perennials by the gate 
had grown very tall and the cinnamon phlox in bloom 
now made the air heavy. Veronika parked her car and 
went up the walk with Tom, feeling a quiet peace. Here 
they were, she and Tom after all these years, going home 
to supper. War and death and calamity had passed over 
them. But side by side with the peace was the remem¬ 
brance of obligation, of part of her life not ordered. 
That was the Stewart part. 

“Tom’s come for supper. Did they send those mush¬ 
rooms?” 

“I will not eat toadstools,” said her mother, angrily. 


300 A Handmaid of the Lord 

“Telephone Peggy. We’re having a party—a family 
party.” 

“Was I consulted?” 

“You’re consulted now.” 

Mrs. Pearse scolded, but mildly, habitually. Nobody 
cared. The twilight fell and the lamps in the living-room 
were lit. In the shabby kitchen the sweetbreads steamed 
and there was the smell of baking shortcake. Little 
Stewart had to be put to bed, and Veronika went up¬ 
stairs and down endlessly. Tom came and sat on the 
kitchen table and in the living-room Dr. Pearse, delighted 
at the interlude of a family dinner, settled himself by the 
reading lamp. No one disturbed him. 

Veronika lit two candles on the table and thought that 
after all Peggy wasn’t so bad when she kept her mouth 
shut. She played the piano rather decently. But her 
mind did not stay on Peggy. She put her child in bed and 
served the dinner and saw them all content for the mo¬ 
ment, and then her thoughts stole away to the thought of 
Elinor and the white daisies that would gleam over her 
little grave in the moonlight, and she mourned because 
Elinor could not have this warm, delicious, troublous 
thing—life. 


CHAPTER V 


i 

^ | V HERE are so many people in New York with the 
earmarks of failure. A strange place, for when 
success has come it is only the success one sees, but 
in failure other failures start up from every corner to 
beckon and to condone and sympathize. Stewart had 
reached the point now when he had to avoid many people 
and many places—the people because he had quarreled 
with them or borrowed their money, the places because 
he might meet such people. He had managed to sublet 
the house and dispose of much of the furniture to the 
people who took the house over with an option to buy it, 
sending the rest on to Valhalla because there seemed 
nothing else to do with it. He had done that unaided. 
Veronika hadn’t cared. But he felt that some day she 
would care and he had sent to her for storage the blue 
brocaded furniture and the odd twisted brass andirons 
with heads of dwarfs and the breakfast room furniture 
of apple green with its lovely painted designs—the 
things from her room—her own mauve silk chaise longue 
—Elinor’s furniture—there were times during the dis¬ 
mantling of the furnishings that Stewart realized how 
much joy he and Veronika must have had, for so many 
things had happy associations, even after a year, so many 
things she had prized, and he had not seemed to remem¬ 
ber until now how much the acquisition of all these things 
had meant to her. He could recall her in a dinner dress 
coming down the stairs—in a soft blue negligee—at their 
301 


302 A Handmaid of the Lord 

first evening party in New York when millions had been 
very close to him and he had insisted on giving her a 
bracelet of platinum and diamonds. She had laughed so 
happily at the extravagance. 

The house was no longer even his to rent. The Hol¬ 
lises lived there now and had put red and white striped 
matting up and down the steps. Veronika’s cream silk 
draperies still were at the windows, but some one had put 
an ugly begonia in full blatant bloom between them. One 
could see it from the street. Stewart never passed the 
house now. He lived first at his club, but that was 
expensive, besides it made him too much linked to one 
crowd. He decided on a hotel—a less expensive hotel a 
little later, as his funds ran short. The sale of the furni¬ 
ture and one of the cars had given him some money— 
and people had offered to lend him some after Elinor’s 
death, and he had raised some on his insurance. There 
had been plenty to relieve Veronika of the hideous em¬ 
barrassment of not having enough at such a time and to 
take them to Valhalla with one car. There he had left 
her with a few hundred dollars and come back to New 
York, hopeful in spite of the recent disasters that bad 
luck had struck bottom for him. 

People were decent. But there was no opportunity. 
There were plenty of men who wanted a game of bridge 
or who knew how to get a drink of whiskey, but they 
never offered to let Stewart sit in at the business game 
he wanted. Dunn had gone to Europe shortly before Eli¬ 
nor s death Cook’s touring, damn him, Stewart thought 
savagely. He couldn’t do anything at all with the com¬ 
pany so under Dunn’s thumb, and Dunn in England try¬ 
ing to handle new contracts on his own account. The 
mere thought could make Stewart see red. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 303 

At first Stewart missed Veronika. He was used to 
talking to Veronika now. Not to have her when the 
black periods of sadness came, when he thought of his 
lost child and his lost fortunes, was dreadful. But Stew¬ 
art knew the rules. Men didn’t have hysterics. They 
got a drink and remained men and cursed and swore and 
decided that it was a hell of a world and the best you 
could do was to get by somehow. The worst times came 
when he imagined himself as one of the men with green 
overcoats and no money who wandered around the finan¬ 
cial district. There wasn’t money enough to project 
anything big. He had his own schemes constantly, but 
they all needed capital. 

“Can I see you this morning, Davis? This is Stewart 
Roy den.” 

That was the way so many telephone conversations 
started. 

Davis—or whoever it was—would postpone the meet¬ 
ing or dodge the proposition Stewart brought or adapt 
it to his own needs and leave Stewart out. No one pitied 
Stewart. He was young and strong and had flown too 
high, they all said. He’d had the big head and tried to 
make a fortune over night. Lost it, all he had. Not a 
safe man, on the whole. Attractive, brilliant fellow, no 
doubt, but it didn’t go any further. Broken with Dunn. 
So the little trickles of half careless gossip ran. Stewart 
knew what they said. He’d heard talk about other men 
in his fix. That was why he had liked Paul Henderson. 
Henderson had never moralized at any one’s expense. 
He had been unscrupulous up to a point—all business was 
that—but he had never tried to mix moral judgments 
with his deals. Because he had been powerful, he could 
do that. Stewart had liked his easy hedonism, his keen 


304 A Handmaid of the Lord 

mind which never fooled itself for a minute as to its mo¬ 
tives. But Stewart had not been successful, and so he 
had fallen prey now to this smooth reproving talk of 
normalcy, of policies of retrenchment. All he had left 
was an attitude toward life and it seemed as if the whole 
business world mocked that because he could not back the 
attitude with money. 

He felt the ridiculousness of his idle days keenly. 
Across a gap there must be occupation for him. But it 
is not easy for a young man who has been rising in the 
Steel Industry and who has made some name for himself 
to suddenly become a manufacturer of tooth paste, a re¬ 
tail merchant, an automobile salesman. The gap was 
large and by the time he clambered across it he knew 
that his morale would be gone. Idle days, brooding dis¬ 
cussion, liquor—and upon him always he seemed to feel 
the mark of the business world which meant—slaughter. 

There was no Veronika. She had disappeared into a 
world somewhere where she was trying to work things 
out with a God whom he did not know, or want to 
know, trying to reconcile death with life. For days she 
seemed forgotten or remained as a sore memory of fail¬ 
ure. He’d taken her from Valhalla and sent her back 
again, wretched, broken. There were days when she 
seemed only a fact, and it was only a fact that he had 
married and brought two children into the world, one of 
whom had died of influenza. Then suddenly she would 
come alive in his memory, and he would ache for her, 
for talk with her and touch of her. On those days his 
conviction that she despised him for his failure was 
hard. For he knew, as was true indeed, that Veronika 
had married him before her love amounted to anything 
and that it had grown with care and kindness and pos- 


A Handmaid of the Lord 305 

sessions and protection. He had always known that 
about her. Then naturally, when he failed, he had seen 
doubt come into her eyes more and more often. He did 
not blame her for that. Love was a sweet and delightful 
experience, but like everything else it was dependent 
on circumstance. 

He thought in those days that he must decide what 
to do about Veronika. She ought to be free from him. 
She would probably have nervous scruples about sepa¬ 
rating, but he could force it through and it would be 
best for her, and they could start fresh. There were 
other men in the world—no doubt their combination had 
been wrong from the start. 

By midsummer he was living in a room at the top 
of a cheap hotel and eating where he pleased, rarely with 
friends. He had dropped most of his clubs. At night 
he walked and thought of women without interest and 
of Dunn with hate. His money was very low and the 
last had been borrowed from his mother. There was 
need for everything—for clothes for himself, for cash 
for Veronika. 

He went into an obscure, quiet-looking grill for sup¬ 
per one night. For two days he had had nothing to 
drink and he was feeling worn and sober. As he looked 
in the glass by the rack where he hung his hat he noticed 
how the gray showed in his hair. Automatically he tried 
to look cocky and successful. He must keep up. 

All the tables were full, but at one of them a man sat 
alone and Stewart pulled out the chair on the other side, 
and drew the card toward him. Mixed grill—filling— 
ninety cents—God, how rotten it was to count the cost 
of your supper! 

Hate and discouragement were in his eyes as he looked 


306 A Handmaid of the Lord 

up and vaguely recognized the man across from him. 
Where had he seen him before? He thought of Veron¬ 
ika automatically. 

“Royden, isn’t it?” said the other man. “Remember 
me? I’m Saul Griffin.” 

“Yes—of course.” 

Stewart eyed him inimically. It was added humilia¬ 
tion for Veronika to have her quondam lover find him 
here—with that frayed cuff showing. 

“Hear you won a big prize.” 

“Some time ago, that was. I’m living on the glory 
of it yet,” answered Saul easily. “How’s Mrs. Royden ?” 

“In Valhalla.” 

“Visiting her father?” 

“We lost our little girl, you know.” 

“I didn’t know—how awful—” 

“Awful,” nodded Stewart. 

“Is Veronika very unhappy?” 

Stewart looked at the other man. He felt suddenly 
that he wanted to confess his failure for Veronika— 
humiliate himself. Here was a man who would not 
gloat over it—and how he knew that he didn’t know. 

“She’s very unhappy,” he said, indicating his order 
to the waitress, “very. She’s made a marvelous fight 
with me and we lost everything—then Elinor.” 

Saul seemed to be visualizing the whole thing. His 
rather soft, sensitive face was strained. 

“Lately—all this?” 

Stewart told him. He told him about many things. 
Their orders came—they ate and smoked and the people 
left the little restaurant and still they talked on about 
business and failures and the strangeness of success and 
all the time what they spoke of really was Veronika, who 


A Handmaid of the Lord 307 


had been the motive and the butt of so much struggle. 
But they mentioned her very little because they both were 
gentlemen and had both wanted to marry her. 

“Of course,” said Stewart, at length, half repenting 
these confidences, “this is all temporary. Of course, I 
shall come back.” 

Saul looked at him doubtfully—then hardly. 

“You must—for her sake.” 

“You mean that was what she married me for?” 
Stewart hadn’t meant to say that, but he did. 

“I mean I hate to think of her out there in Valhalla 
again. She wanted things so desperately. I used to be 
bitter about her wanting things. But gradually I came 
to understand as I’ve seen other women wanting—want¬ 
ing—that her demands were different. It was her re¬ 
spect for life—her self-respect that needed to have things 
better and finer. I saw her a few months ago, you know, 
one day at a party.” 

“Did you?” 

“I told her she looked smug. After I got away her 
face stayed with me. I was a fool to think it was smug. 
Anything but that. It was her clothes which put me off.” 

“Well—better go before they put us out?” 

They went out in the street. 

“I live near here,” said Saul, “our apartment’s in the 
next block. Can’t you come home with me? My wife 
will be home now. Like to have you meet her.” 

Stewart shook his head. 

“Thanks,” he said, “I must get back to my hotel.” 

They shook hands and parted, and Stewart went 
briskly down the street as if quickly on his way to wring 
happiness out of the world for Veronika. But halfway 
back to the cheap hotel he remembered that happiness 


308 A Handmaid of the Lord 

couldn’t be wrung—he had tried it before. Nothing 
could be forced. Your luck didn’t change like that. He 
felt intolerably let down and in need of a drink. 

He hated to go back to the hotel, but he did so at last. 
Its shabby corridor depressed him. Under his door he 
found a telephone message marked as having come at 
four that afternoon. “Call Mr. Dunn in A.M.” 

“Dunn,” said Stewart, aloud. “Dunn—what does he 
want? Well—maybe he wants to buy me off the West- 
over directorate. That would be something for Veron¬ 
ika.” And falling across the bed wearily, for he had 
found his drink, he went to sleep. 

2 

When he awoke the sun was streaming in and he was 
still extremely tired. Energy didn’t flow back easily 
those days. At first he lay stupidly, wondering why 
he should get up. Then he heard a chambermaid rat¬ 
tling his doorknob and shook himself awake. Dunn’s 
message lay on his bureau. He was minded this morn¬ 
ing to disregard it or to tell him to go to hell. How¬ 
ever, he bathed In the sloppy shower down the hall and 
dressed himself laboriously that he might not look seedy 
when he told Dunn to go to hell. He chose a shirt 
which was clean and not too shabby, and he could get his 
shoes shined at the corner. 

Mr. Dunn was sitting behind his desk when Stewart 
came in. He looked as if he had been busy for hours 
and was squeezing in time for this appointment made 
over the telephone with Stewart. Stewart hated him 
for his activity from the depths of his own inactiv¬ 
ity. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 309 

“How are you, Royden?” 

“Very well, Mr. Dunn. ,, 

“Haven’t seen much of you lately.” 

“Tve been busy.” 

Dunn looked him over. He saw the gray lines in 
Stewart’s hair, and he was not inexperienced. He knew 
how hard they’d forced Stewart. 

“I have a proposition that may interest you. We are 
interested—our board of directors—in going on, now that 
things are resuming a normal activity, with the acquisi¬ 
tion and development of ore properties on the Valhalla 
range. You made the first investigation. We would 
like you to go out there and take charge of the develop¬ 
ment.” 

“I’ve had no experience in mining, Mr. Dunn,” said 
Stewart shortly. “My experience in Westover was in 
the manufacture of steel. Until recently I was engaged 
in the export end—as you know.” 

“But you made the first investigation in Valhalla—” 

“At that time I was interested in Valhalla for personal 
reasons.” 

“Wife’s people live there, I believe.” 

“They do.” 

Dunn fingered his chin. Royden was vicious. Still, 
after all, they did want him badly. There had been a 
good deal of talk yesterday on the board about having 
let too good a man go when Royden was let out. Besides 
if he stayed around he might get in with some other 
company. And there were the other reasons— 

“I don’t think you quite get me—” 

Stewart’s head was poised, eager. He knew that tone 
of Dunn’s. So they wanted him after all, did they? 
He’d always told Veronika that they’d have to come to 


310 A Handmaid of the Lord 


him. He looked stronger, more confident. Dunn saw 
the power visibly rise in him. 

“Suppose you make that somewhat plainer, Mr. Dunn. 
What is there in it?” 

“There’s more in it than appears. There’s as much 
of a chance as you can make it. Mind you, I don’t say 
these properties will necessarily be developed—but they 
promised well.” 

“And how much power have I?” 

“Well—within reason—at the recommendation of the 
board, a great deal.” 

“I would have to be a member of the board, Mr. 
Dunn,” Stewart put it down flatly. “I’ll develop your 
properties if you like, but I must have a chance to put 
things before the board myself and a chance to acquire 
interests myself—” 

“I understand you’re hardly in a position at present 
to acquire holdings.” 

“I’m not. I’ll have to be carried. But if I can be 
valuable out there it’s worth it to you.” 

Dunn knew it was. He had a dozen reasons back of 
every action. Among others now he wanted Stewart in 
before Carver could get his own son lined up for this 
work. Carver’s son was less to Dunn’s liking than 
Stewart. It threw the balance of power to Carver. If 
he could simply say that they owed this to Royden. 

He smiled his clever, successful smile. 

“We can make it worth your while, Royden. These 
matters can be adjusted to satisfy you, I am sure.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Dunn.” 

“Make your plans then to leave immediately, will you ? 
I understand you have given up your New York house. 
Where is your family now ?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 311 

“My wife’s in Valhalla with her people.” 

“I met your wife’s sister in London. Charming per¬ 
son. I met her at Lady Graves’ country house. She 
spoke of you.” 

“She is having great success.” 

“So I understand. Is it authentic, by the way, that 
she’s to marry young Cappan, Lady Graves’ nephew?” 

“Cappan?” Stewart saw light—Cappan steel was a 
big English corporation, an enormously wealthy house. 

“I believe—though it’s quite in the family yet—that 
it is quite authentic,” he answered. 

“Fine,” said Dunn. That was another good reason 
for having Royden back. Royden knew too much about 
the way their corporation was run to be let loose for 
Cappan to pick up. Royden was too valuable. 

Stewart left the office. If he’d known of that Cappan 
business he might have made a better bargain. Still— 
this was good enough. Valhalla—his own master—and 
on the directorate. His clothes seemed to fit him better 
—the inimical, taunting looks seemed to drop like masks 
from the faces around him. People were friendly. 


CHAPTER VI 


i 

f H 'HE Valhalla papers were full of the news. They 
were always proud of Lily, whom they referred 
to usually as “Valhalla’s own Lily Pearse.” But this 
news, clipped from society magazines and flashed through 
the Associated Press, quite enthralled them. “Beautiful 
actress’s romance. American girl marries into one of 
England’s wealthiest families, connected by marriage 
with—” and so on. The blatant wording of it, accom¬ 
panied by endless photographs of Lily, was everywhere. 
It seemed as if all Lily’s personal success, her lovely 
voice and charming acting, was nothing in the eyes of 
the press and the world in comparison with her marriage 
to this rich young man, hero of the war, nephew of 
Lady Graves, who had been one of the Scarborough girls 
of South Carolina. 

Even Mrs. Pearse, though unwilling to disallow her 
premise that all marriage was slavery, showed that she 
was faintly impressed. She said that she hoped Lily 
wouldn’t lose her health over there in that damp country 
and why didn’t she write to her mother about it? But 
she was gratified. To her, as to Valhalla, titles had a 
storybook sound and Lily was close to them. 

People halted Veronika on the street to ask about it, 
to recall that they had always prophesied great things 
for Lily. Ellie Lewis stopped her resplendent Pierce 
Arrow to run up to the Pearse door and gossip with 
Veronika. 


312 


A Handmaid of the Lord 313 


“Is he young and good looking—Lily’s man?” 

“Yes—he’s young.” 

“Is it true that he’s had half his face shot away?” 

“What rubbish, Elbe. Who’s been telling you that?” 

“Oh, you know how people talk. I tell them that it’s 
very common over there for rich young men—lords— 
to marry girls off the stage.” 

“Truly?” Veronika’s tone was one which she seldom 
used these days, but it disposed of Lily’s questionnaire. 
It implied familiarity with things quite beyond Elbe’s 
ken. 

But when her visitor had gone Veronika re-read her 
last letter from Lily—the only one of months. It brought 
her sister so perfectly to mind. She could see her clearly 
in that slim black dress which she had put in her cabin 
trunk, with her yellow hair shingled and brushed back 
until it fitted the shape of her face perfectly—always a 
picture, always charming with that easy, accustomed man¬ 
ner. How they would stare at her at English dinner 
tables and how confidently she would meet every one. 
Never any awkwardness, always perfectly dressed. 

She would be a guest in great houses—a favored guest 
too. There was no doubt of that. No man would ever 
be ashamed of Lily. And she wrote that they were to 
live part of the time in the country in an old house—a 
great place that her young husband was buying from 
some friend of his, an impoverished nobleman. Riches 
—position—but she could have had all that from Paul 
Henderson. The stake she had been playing for was 
larger and she had won. The letter was half crushed 
in Veronika’s hand, but the words of it were in her 
mind ; — 

“I’m really wild about Jerry. If I hadn’t been, nothing 


314 A Handmaid of the Lord 

would have pulled me off the stage. Lyon Duxbury, 
who’s been hanging around, never could make me stop 
acting. And maybe I’ll go back to it again. I don’t 
know. But first there’ll be Jerry and my house—babies, 
I suppose. English people always have rafts of them, 
but they have so many nurses it doesn’t cramp their style. 
Jerry really is a darling. They don’t grow like that in 
New York. He’s so gloriously nonchalant about every¬ 
thing that we get along perfectly. His connections don’t 
seem to think I’m so bad. They are so glad Jerry didn’t 
get killed in the war or marry a French nurse that they 
put up with anything, I suppose. However, they’ll make 
it pleasant.” And then, at the end, “Jerry’s father is 
interested in steel manufacture or something like that. 
If there’s any way I can help Stewart let me know. And 
don’t stick around Valhalla, Ronny. It’s horrible for 
you. Of course, just at first you went there on impulse, 
but now I should think you’d break away. I’m glad I can 
make my contract an excuse for getting married over 
here. I never did have your feeling about the old home¬ 
stead, you know—” 

Veronika looked around her. Through the lace cur¬ 
tains the glimmer of afternoon sun came on the worn 
sofa, the ill-matched chairs of plush and leather, the rug 
that mocked Oriental colorings, the cherry table and 
the one of mission oak. She had redeemed the stupid 
room with a vase here, a pile of books, a lamp or two. 
But as she looked at it now it seemed hopelessly shabby 
—worse, a worthless room. Much of her childhood, 
much of her youth had gone in the ordering of this 
pile of rubbish. Her feeling for the place! Lily was 
indifferent, but Veronika felt at that moment that her 
own was livid hate. 


A Handmaid of the Lord 315 

Clatter came her mother’s heels down the stairs. 

“Elbe Lewis is gone?” 

“You see that she is.” 

“What did she want?” 

“She wanted news about Lily—whether Englishmen 
married girls off the stage and so on.” 

“Nosey thing.” 

“Well—she didn’t find out much from me.” 

“I hope you were nice to her.” 

“Why should I be nice to her?” 

Airs. Pearse surveyed her daughter. 

“What’s the matter with you?” 

“What do you mean?” 

Her mother relapsed into a kind of muttering. 

“I wish I had that husband of yours here—loafer.” 

“Leave him alone, will you?” 

“I will just as much as I please. Leaving you here 
like this—while he’s running around with other women. 
If you had any spirit you’d give him a piece of your 
mind that he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.” 

“Will you mind your own business? I’ve enough to 
think of—” 

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t go around carrying the world 
on my shoulders—” 

Veronika’s tone mounted to hysterics. 

“The world on my shoulders! The world on my 
shoulders! Who else is there to carry it? Of course 
I have it. Doesn’t every one of you dodge every respon¬ 
sibility but me. Haven’t I been clearing up chaos for 
years for all of you? Did Lily ever do anything except 
take care of herself?” 

“And I admire her for it,” said Airs. Pearse stoutly. 

“You do! You would. But if something has to be 


316 A Handmaid of the Lord 

done, it’s me that does it. All day I’ve been at it, cooking 
for you, listening to that wife of Tom’s talk and talk 
about the baby she doesn’t want, and how Tom runs 
around with other girls—I’ve had to cheer her up—I’ve 
had to cook and wash out napkins—” 

“Well, why don’t you get a home of your own? This 
is my house. Why don’t you live with your husband 
then? What’s the truth of it? Has he left you?” 

Fear closed in around Veronika, pricking her from 
every direction. She could feel something wrong with 
her eyesight. Things wavered. Maybe he had deserted 
her—left her and her baby here to the mercy of what¬ 
ever chance might come. The contrast of Lily’s happi¬ 
ness made her own situation preposterous. She had 
tried so hard to play things right, to support her system 
of God and ethics, and life slapped her in the face at 
every turn. While all the time her mother called out 
to her that she was a fool, an utter fool. 

“What if he has left me?” she asked darkly. “What 
if he has?” 

“No man could ever leave me like that.” 

Veronika shrieked with laughter. 

“You and your man,” she cried, “you who warped my 
life from the beginning. You taught me everything 
except the things I should have known—how to live 
beautifully. What chance have I had—what chance have 
I had?” 

“Don’t yell so.” 

“I’ll yell so I’ll bring the house down about my ears, 
if I want to. I’ve a right to yell, God knows.” 

“If you’d keep away from that church and cemetery 
maybe you wouldn’t lose your mind.” 

Veronika’s hands clenched and her eyes glared. They 


A Handmaid of the Lord 317 

stood facing each other and then in horrible realization 
Veronika saw likeness between them. Crying, laughing, 
half screaming, she fled past her mother, up to her room, 
where the springs on her bed creaked beneath her as they 
had done so often before as she lay sobbing, crying again 
and again in that black hour the name of the one person 
who seemed to have understood her and cared for her, 
her dead child. 

Yet at five o’clock, when the whistles blew through the 
town announcing that work stopped for hundreds of 
workmen, Veronika automatically remembered that baked 
ham takes an hour to cook. She sullenly resisted the 
thought, but still Stewart had to have his cream of wheat 
now, her father would be home. Her father came home 
so weary—why give him another scene? She might 
mark her child as she had been marked. She would get 
supper. Then to-morrow she would find a place some¬ 
where for herself and little Stewart to live by them¬ 
selves. Out of all this wreckage she would save her son 
at least. 

Carefully she dressed herself—a fine dress of orange- 
silk crepe that would catch the baby’s eye and delight 
him, a dress that proclaimed her a lady of taste. Her 
mother sat rocking on the porch as she went down. 
Veronika straightened the chairs which she had pushed 
aside in the living-room in her storm of anger. For a 
moment she stood by the window wondering if little 
Stewart had heard anything. Then she called him. 

Her feet felt leaden as she went about her work, her 
heart as if it had been rubbed sore with all the injustice. 
In her mind she could see Stewart going up and down 
the streets of New York, abandoning her and his child. 
Lily would help him, she said. Lily help her husband. 


318 A Handmaid of the Lord 


Why was it always Lily who seemed able to do every¬ 
thing ? 

Dr. Pearse’s steps dragged up the walk. He cleared 
his throat and hung up his coat and brushed his hair 
before the mirror in the hall. Veronika knew his every 
movement. She heard him coming to the kitchen and 
tried to make her face brighter. At least he'd had 
enough. 

“I brought you a box of candy, Ronny,” said Dr. 
Pearse. “I was just passing the store.” 

She took it from him, gently, the red-cheeked girl 
under the glazed paper wrapping smiling up at her. 

“How nice.” 

“It’s nothing. You don’t have such a good time as 
you should, Ronny—with all you do.” 

“Oh, I’m all right.” She felt the kindness like a 
weight. Did he perhaps know that Stewart had deserted 
her? 

Baked ham. Dr. Pearse liked it and his wife too ate 
eagerly. But Veronika could not touch her plate. She 
listened to the quiet which shut her in, the sounds of the 
two old people eating, heard the whistle of the train from 
Duluth. The train—would she ever take it again ? 

“Who’s that on the walk?” asked Mrs. Pearse. 

Veronika got up and went to the kitchen. 

“I don’t want to see anybody more about Lily to¬ 
night. You tell them she is to be married in Westminster 
Abbey if you like.” 

Dr. Pearse had to go to the door. Veronika sat with 
her head in her hands on the table. She heard voices 
through the house. She wouldn’t see people unless she 
liked. Then she stood up suddenly palpitant— 

Stewart, she cried, Stewart, did you really come ?” 


A Handmaid of the Lord 319 

He stood there in the doorway, all the old savor of 
safety and protection about him and all the feeling she 
had been suppressing came back in a flood of affection. 
Lily and her triumphs were swept aside. She had her 
husband. 

She could see him—hear his talk of reassuring things 
—know that he would try to fend off misfortune— 
feel his arm about her comfortingly. But it all seemed 
so far off—so remote. 

“I’m afraid that she’s worn out,” said Dr. Pearse. 

Veronika shook her head. She did not dare speak 
for fear she would cry, and she didn’t want Stewart to 
have a scene the first hour he was there. 

Stewart spoke in his old confident way. 

“She must rest,” he said, “before we settle down in 
Valhalla for a while and find a house. I think I’ll ship 
her to England to see Lily married.” His eyes sought 
his wife’s, full of pity, eager with satisfaction at being 
able to promise help. 

“And how about me ?” asked Mrs. Pearse of her hus¬ 
band. “Why don’t you send me to see my daughter 
married ?” 


2 

There seemed to be the same hush about the Pearse 
house to-night as there had been the night before her 
marriage. Veronika guessed how badly she must look to 
have the house quieted on her account and these plans 
laid for her relief. They sent her early to bed and Dr. 
Pearse clumsily brought up a glass of hot milk. Then 
she was alone, but comfortingly alone, for Stewart had 
only gone to look after some telegrams. She undressed 


320 A Handmaid of the Lord 


slowly. The baby was quiet in his crib on the other side 
of the room, but she could hear his gentle breathing. 

She knelt down beside the bed. Every night it was 
her habit to arrange her responsibilities in prayers— 
there was one for Lily, one for her father—for Stewart’s 
happiness—the moment she gave to prayer, not for Eli¬ 
nor, but to her. She set her family in order as best she 
could. But then, as she threw open her window and 
looked out on the clump of pines in the back yard, above 
which, in somber dignity and space, Deity had so often 
been secretly manifest and magnificent, she felt again the 
grave mystery and terror and wonder of the day, of all 
days, and hugged them close to her. This moment was 
only respite. Once she might have thought it marked a 
turning. But she knew better now. To-morrow she 
would be again at the mercy of chance, circumstance, emo¬ 
tion. She would never cheat life and she could not con¬ 
trol it. Her only weapon was bravery, her only support 
one hand touching something in the soft darkness of 
eternity. 

With a gesture of acceptance that was gallant in its 
mingled weariness and eagerness, she spread out her 
hands— 

“It won’t be my way,” she said aloud. 


THE END 



















































